Metacity and support for full alpha

[John Palmieri <johnp martianrock com>]

Hello,

I was wondering why Metacity does not support full alpha channels with
PNG themes (or does it?).  Is it purely a performance issue or just a
case of too many features, too little time? 

On the performance front, Metacity already does masking on its corner to
make them rounded, could this not be extended to arbitrary masking
(using alpha channels as a refrence) of all the elements in a frame?  I
want to be able to create BeOS style themes and some of the funky themes
from Elightenment and Sawfish.  I understand that Metacity is supposed
to be the light, fast and not so flashy window manager but I belive full
alpha, or at least partial alpha (masking) could be used for some realy
great usability improvments or at least experiments :-)  Plus the
features could easly be turned off for resource strapped computers.

On the too many features, too little time front.  If someone could
kindly point me to the correct .c file(s) that draws the frame I would
gladly have a look.  I just can't seem to be able to locate it in the
code.

--
J5