Dexpot help needed

[bobgrosh]

Here is what I have so far.
http://rainmetertv.blogspot.com/2011/06/dexpot-stuff.html
I want a different theme on each virtual window.
I could not find any instructions, so i wrote my own based on all the forum posts I could find.

[bobgrosh]

Well, not much help on this one. LOL
I played with VDM now for a couple days.

On three windows 7 PC's I set up three different VDMs, VirtuaWin, Dexpot and Windows Desktops.

VirtuaWin:
I didn't like the user interface on VirtuaWin and since it didn't have support for the additional bangs that Dexpot has in Rainmeter, I set it aside early on.

Dexpot:

Dexpot has some nice switching support in the windows 7 task bar. I like the cube feature. Decpot's biggest drawback for me is that it causes windows 7 to disable aero after it has been running for a while. It turns out that when I broadcast my show, I need to broadcast the desktop once in a while to do weather reports and promos. This puts the weather and other skins on the desktop. Unfortunately, when Aero gets turned off, all the skins disappear from the video. ( The video shows the wallpaper under the skins but not the skins. The skins are still visible on my screen, it is just that the video encoder program (Procaster) needs Aero in order to "see" them.

Turning off Areo when running Dexpot. the Procaster and Rainmeter is a game killer for using it on my broadcast computers, but, since I can still use it in the studio, I continued playing with it.

Decpot's second problem is that it only switches wallpapers and running apps, not Rainmeter themes. Anything done in one desktop to rainmeter is done to Rainmeter in all desktops. There appears to be some way to modify skins so they change when you switch desktops, but it seems I would have to do extensive modifications to all the skins. There does not seem to be a simple way to assign a different "THEME" to each desktop. If there was it would make VDM's really usefull (for me). Int the studio, I need to switch rapidly between an assortment of tools for the 25 channels I broadcast. Mome channels need weather forecasts, others need football scores, each needs a different google calender, some of them need RSS feeds, some don't. A separate Rainmeter Theme, and desktop for each channel would be ideal. I could then handle all twenty five webcast channels on just two or three computers in the studio.

Microsoft Desktops.

I spent most of a day playing with Microsoft's VDM, "Desktops".
It is more stable than Dexpot. It can actually broadcast my desktop to Livestream using Procaster, then switch to another desktop and monitor the current (or some other ), broadcast.
Like Dexpot, it is easy to switch between desktops with the same little icon on the windows task bar.

Problems: You are limited to four desktops. Aero, Procaster and Rainmeter all play together nicely, BUT ONLY ON DESKTOP #1. Desktops 2,3 and 4 always have Aero disabled and you can not have Rainmeter on any desktop except for #1. If you start Procaster in desktop 2,3 or 4, it's controls show up in desktop 1 even when it is broadcasting the screen from desktop 2,3 or 4.
I like the way Windows Desktops creates four seperate instances for it's desktops, but there seems to be a number of programs that won't launch on any instance other than #1.


I guess I need to go back and give VirtuaWin a more though trial and see if it will play nice with Rainmeter, Procaster, Flash and Aero.

At his point, it looks like Dexpot has the best chance of working in the studio. I know from some other forum posts that at least one person got different skins for each desktop using Dexpot, I just haven't figured it out yet.

More later as I continue my investigation.

[Seahorse]

Bob, I love you posts, although I don't understand half of what you use...

[GhostMatrix]

On a quick review...

First you need Rainmeter 2.0 or above to have the "VirtualDesktops.dll" file in the plugins folder of Rainmeter...

Second

Some peoples still have Windows XP (I was one of them about 2 weeks ago) so I suggest to have in your blog the location for both.

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\Rainmeter
Windows Vista and later: C:\Users\YourName\Appdata\Roaming\Rainmeter

Now about your location path in Windows 7...

[Variables]
VDM=Dexpot
VDMPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Dexpot\dexpot.exe

Program Files (x86) ?

Mine on Windows 7...

[Variables]
VDM=Dexpot
VDMPath=C:\Program Files\Dexpot\dexpot.exe


Third

For the VDMConfig.ini file you could add in your blog that you don't need to specify every skins that you have, only the ones who need to run on specific desktop(s), because if you don't specify a skin in the VDMConfig.ini the skin will be on every virtual desktop by default.


and this is wrong (/) for the skin name...

[WTLS(2)/System]
VDesktop=1

it should be (\)...

[WTLS(2)\System]
VDesktop=1


GM

[bobgrosh]

Ahhh!

I knew as soon as I saw "Ghost" in my "View your posts" listing that I hooked the expert.

You must be a busy guy. The wait was worth it.


Thanks, I'll have another look at that project tonight and maybe make some progress. I'll report back when I get it fixed.

Later
Bob

[blamenixon]

I'm a bit confused at a few points:
is the VDMConfig.ini file something I need to create myself? I'm far from the status of a programmer, so a bit of the walkthrough and the comments by GhostMatrix were above my knowledge. I have gotten to the point of Step 2B and am at a complete loss.....please help.

Bobgrosh, I love the fact that we're on the same page, the idea came to me yesterday, and I'm very happy to see you're already working on it. My goal is to use Omnimo to create a Windows 8 influenced UI in order to maximize the screen space on my netbook. When everything is complete, I'll be sure to share screenshots!

[GhostMatrix]

@blamenixon

#Step 2

Stop "Rainmeter" and "Dexpot"

Go to C:\Users\YourName\Appdata\Roaming\Rainmeter

Create the VDM.ini file with the following inside...

[Variables]
VDM=Dexpot
VDMPath=C:\Program Files\Dexpot\dexpot.exe



Create the VDMConfig.ini file

Now let say you have four virtual desktop but you want the clock on each ones, you simply do nothing here, because if you don't specify a skin in the VDMConfig.ini the skin will be on every virtual desktop by default.



Now let say you have the skin named Drive_C and you want it on the virtual desktop 3 only, in the VDMConfig you will put...

[Drive_C]
VDesktop=3

Now let say you have the skin named Weather and you want it on the virtual desktop 1 and 2, in the VDMConfig you will put...

[Weather]
VDesktop=1,2

Now let say you want the Weather skin on different position on the virtual desktop 2, in the VDMConfig it will be like this instead...

[Weather]
VDesktop=1,2
VD1Position=0,10
VD2Position=400,500

--------------------

The following is related if you have a suite (a main folder with different skin folders)
In this case you have to specify the name of the suite and the skin folder, let say the name of the suite is Test...

[Test\RainWeather]
VDesktop=1

[Test\Internet]
VDesktop=4

[Test\Clock]
VDesktop=1,3
VD1Position=0,10
VD3Position=400,500


After that you restart "Dexpot" and then "Rainmeter".


GM

[justme]

I used Dexpot with 64 bit Windows 7, and had numerous problems. Most importantly, my computer became unstable, and would sometimes blue screen; sometimes fail to come out of sleep; and sometimes freeze up. Secondly, Dexpot sometimes spuriously moved windows between desktops. I have bindkeys to move between desktops, and as I switched desktops from 3 to 2 to 1, sometimes a window would jump from 2 to 1, for example.

Have any of you seen these kinds of problems?

The system administrator recommended Dexpot for a, perhaps obscure, reason. Within Windows, we run EOD (Exceed on Demand) to have access to software under Linux. I'm often working on multiple projects and when I had a pure Linux system, would put windows/programs related to each project on individual Linux desktops. Problem is, under Windows 7 with EOD as my gateway to Linux, this doesn't work so well anymore. I can separate my Linux/EOD windows between Dexpot desktops, but the moment my laptop goes to sleep and the EOD session suspends, all my Linux/EOD windows forget where they belong. Or rather, neither Dexpot nor EOD knows how to keep track of them. The sys admins recommended setting up rules in Dexpot to segregate my windows, which fixed about 90% of the problem; most of the projects involve files that have names with characteristic bits of the project name, so I can say that any window with "XYZ" in the title bar belongs on desktop 2, windows with "UVW" in the title belong on desktop 3, etc. This was a hack, but worked acceptably... but the crashing and general instability was unacceptable. Are you folks aware of any other desktop managers that may be more stable but also allow similar rules to be written?