OSDev.org

I was just reminded of XPenguins, Neko, AMOR, and all the rest, and started wondering if such desktop toys are even possible in many windowing systems. (You can try neko on aiju.de; click the cat in the top left corner.) On the other hand, I imagine a rigorously secure window system might make implementing these things impossible, or at least difficult. So I'm wondering, are they possible/difficult/easy in many window systems? I see Neko has lots of ports.

I wasn't thinking of Crabs, but it's definitely related. The crabs story (mostly in PDFs) covers some of the issues involved. It's entertaining too; I particularly like the bit where an artist was more offended by the violation of the laws of nature (as she understood the nature of window systems) than by what it did to her work. I know how she felt.

I don't have support for transparent windows, nor can applications retrieve window locations or the absolute cursor position from the server, so that would rule most desktop toys out. Maybe it is time for me to support those, some desktop toys would be a nice addition!