Re: true transparency

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Michael ROGERS wrote:

->>The hole point of the desktop metaphor is that you *can* stack up windows,
->>without fear of confusion! And anyway, why would you want your windows
->>transparent if you were going to *avoid* putting them on top of each
->>other!
->
->Obviously you would not want all of your windows to be transparent, and you
->would not want most windows to be completely transparent. Alpha channel 
->support would allow partially transparent windows.
->
->>You'd be moving windows about in order to get them in a position where you
->>could understand their contents! What is the point? Why would it be
->>pretty? If you want to see what's behind a window, you move it out of the
->>way. The point of a window, is seeing what is *in* it!
->
->Yes, the contents would still have to be opaque  :)
->
->>Pseudo transparent is cool, 'cos you can work without obscuring the
->>beautiful background you just spent hours creating. You can still read
->>text against it, and work with it. If you tried to read text with a gmc
->>window behind it with 'true' transparency enabled, even if the
->>windows were only *slightly* overlapping, it wouldn't be legible! I truly
->>believe if such a feature was available, you'd show it to your friend,
->>play for 5 minutes, then turn it off and get back to work.
->>
->>Just try to picture 'true' transparency, whilst looking at your average
->>desktop. Chaos.
->>
->>No?
->
->Not necessarily. Partial true transparency would look better than pseudo 
->transparency, and it would be just as usable. I agree, large areas of 
->complete transparency would be very confusing, just like completely clean
->French windows.
->
->Michael Rogers

So let me get this straight. You now want "partial true transparent"
windows with "opaque contents", but not all of them.

And this is useful because?

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