panel and applet writing issues

[John Ellis <johne bellatlantic net>]

Ok George, I have another problem with applets, this time
it deals with transparency.

I am using the "change_back" signal.

I have it sort of working, the only problem is with pixmaps, they
do not look good because the offset and scale are often incorrect.
Is there a way to get the offset and proper size that the pixmap
should scale to? Or even better, a way to get a pointer to a pixmap
created for you by the panel? Actually, it would be nice if the
applet->window attributes were set/changed automatically by the
panel. Then I wouldn't need this callback at all :)

I even tried to call gdk_window_shape_combine_mask() on the 
applet->window, but that would not work. Is this part still work in
progress? I ask this because the "change_back" signal is not emitted
at startup, so I must cause this event to happen by configuring the
panel in some way.

If you are interested in what I have so far,
below is a link to a file. It contains a patch to clockmail which adds
the transparency code I have up to now, and an example theme that uses
a background with transparency to test with. Just point clockmail to
the theme's directory name (calendar-trans) in the theme property tab.

I also notice the APPLET_WRITING Makefile example has not been updated
to use gnome-config and ORBit, that is included too.
(This example is for clockmail, not the current one which was for fish)

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/cm-transparency.tgz

John
--
John Ellis <johne@bellatlantic.net>
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/