This software is a flexible and customizable composite manager that employs Cairo for rendering.
Initially, the team tried to make enhancements to Metacity's compositing features. Still, it didn't provide any way of doing 2D rendering, leading to numerous regressions. Therefore, they concluded that Cairo was the best option for rendering in both 2D and 3D. Unfortunately, they couldn't use the Texture From Pixmap extension since it's an OpenGL feature leading to some performance problems. To get the surface using Cairo, they had to copy it from the Xcomposite pixmap onto the surface. This caused some slowness, and even though they tried using Xshm to hasten transfers, it wasn't enough to provide reasonable performance. However, the solution minimized the problem by optimizing the redraw of damaged areas.
CCM is built using GObject for an object model design and provides a plugin system that allows the addition of various effects. Presently, only "shadow" and "menu transparency" plugins are available, with several more expected in the future. Lastly, Cairo Composite Manager aims to offer just enough shortcuts and options to avoid conflict with the window manager while trying to work with it to add effects. Future plans for the software include adding a clutter backend, creating some means for other applications to interact with Cairo Composite Manager, particularly accessibility applications, and adding more plugins to enhance the software's effectiveness.
Version 0.2.91: N/A