Full Screen Magnification with Compiz Plugin

[musther]

I'm looking for decent, fast and reliable, quickly accessible full screen magnification for Ubuntu. I know this can be done with gnome-mag, and that's fair enough, but the compiz-zoom seems much better (apart from its one big flaw, it doesn't accept input). I've heard bits and pieces about interactive zoom plugins for compiz, but can't find anything concrete, is anyone even working on one?

This is something that would be of great use to a lot of people, does anybody know anything about it?

[jasongrieves]

First, beryl's zoom can accept user input. I am not sure of compiz (Although i heard it can). It has many limitations. Look up instructions for Beryl, and play with the GUI for Zoom to accomplish this.

Kristin is working on exactly what you want . Her blog can be seen here
http://dev.beryl-project.org/~kristi...ummer-of-code/

Once Ubuntu syncs up with the newest compiz/beryl code, we should be able to get some betas of her software into testing. From what she says, it looks like her zoom will go ahead right into compiz-fusion....

hope this helps.

[musther]

I found Kristin's blog very encouraging, so we should be able to try out the betas of that on 7.10 as it'll be synced with the up-to-date compiz-fusion?

Thanks

[jasongrieves]

that is my hope. If not, someone in our community will bring up some instructions on how to test it.

[KristianLy]

It's nice to see people taking interest in ezoom

As I just posted on my blog (http://dev.beryl-project.org/~kristian/), ezoom just entered the "plugins-main" package repository of Compiz Fusion, which hopefully means it'll be packaged ASAP for Ubuntu Gutsy.

Oh, by the way Jason, Kristian is a boy's name

[musther]

Ah, but he didn't write Kristian, he wrote Kristin

I'm glad ezoom's in there though, I'm am really looking forward to it. Please Kristian, tell us more about it!

And does anybody fancy explaining how I can get this up to date, ezoom containing, plugins-main package installed on Fiesty?

Thanks

[KristianLy]

Ah, but he didn't write Kristian, he wrote Kristin

I'm glad ezoom's in there though, I'm am really looking forward to it. Please Kristian, tell us more about it!

And does anybody fancy explaining how I can get this up to date, ezoom containing, plugins-main package installed on Fiesty?

Well, ezoom zooms without disabeling input, unlike the zoom plugin that's included in the compiz core package. It (optionally) tracks focus so if you alt tab to another window it will move the zoom area there and (optionally) adjust the zoom level to best fit to the window. Through some treacherous trickery it is also able to keep the zoomed area still while moving the mouse, something Beryl's input zoom never manged, in other words: You can zoom in on a window and interact with the window and the zoomed area won't move.

It also has a rather simple but powerful dbus interface which I plan to use to send it at-spi information, or otherwise let other applications drive the zoom (like orca)

As for how to use it, Trevino has a Feisty repository, details about it can be found at the opencompositing forums: http://forums.opencompositing.org/vi...php?f=14&t=131 though it hasn't caught up yet to the recent changes (his plugins-main package is from 0724). When he catches up, ezoom will be in those packages. Since I don't use his packages, I can't vouch for the quality, but it is the most used Compiz Fusion repository for Ubuntu Feisty.

[janbockaert]

...through some treacherous trickery it is also able to keep the zoomed area still while moving the mouse, something Beryl's input zoom never manged, in other words: You can zoom in on a window and interact with the window and the zoomed area won't move.
.

That is great,that was the reasons i did not like beryl's input zoom.

ezoom is now in my compiz configuration (trevino-repos), i can enable it, but there are no options to chose. it doesn't seems to work, and i can not find the plugin in gconf.

I guess i'll wait for another update?

[KristianLy]

ezoom is now in my compiz configuration (trevino-repos), i can enable it, but there are no options to chose. it doesn't seems to work, and i can not find the plugin in gconf.

I guess i'll wait for another update?

There was a minor blunder with the initial packaging causing the metadata to not be packaged, and that's what describes the options.

You can either wait for the packages to update, or download http://gitweb.opencompositing.org/?p...e2edb350ac4ac9 manually (make sure you get the pure .xml not a html version of it) and put it in /usr/share/compiz

[janbockaert]

Thanks for the information and the plugin. Updates are almost daily, so i guess i'll wait one more day to see if ezoom arrives.

I'm looking forward using it. (and showing it to my mac and vista friends )