Re: Is Alpha Channel support in next release plan?

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Mon, 2003-08-04 at 06:14, Christof Petig wrote:
> Good point. But it really hurts to see eye candy features in competing 
> toolkits when their gtk support has not even started. I'd even dance 
> with joy if we had had this dirty hack avaible!
> 

I think that adding alpha-channel to gdk generally is probably the best
way to go, even if the final pixmap that's painted into the X-window has
it's alpha ignored. 

> But it has to be in gdk, too. AFAIK it is not possible to make widgets 
> partially translucent (e.g. entries within a container which has a 
> background image). So even if X11 needs work to support translucent 
> windows, gdk needs some work which will not hurt to have before the X11 
> feature is available.

You are absolutely right.  I kind of glossed over this whole part.  It's
not that we need to hack things like transparent windows, but we need to
have alpha-channel support all throughout gdk, definitely.  I think this
area is definitely worth the work.  Any idea on how hard this is to
implement?  If every widget is rendered using X11 calls, then that's
harder, but if every widget was rendered using GdkPixbuf or something,
then we'd have an easier time.

> 
> I'd love to see partially translucent entries and translucent containers 
> with tooltips (tooltip means xwindow, this seem to imply opacity).

Definitely, although most "windows" such as menus, popups and tooltips
cannot be transparent without nasty hacks.  But if the gdk support for
alpha was there, then those who wanted to could have these hacks, and
when X11 support comes along, then everything will just work.

> 
> I even offer time to help implementing (but not before Nov).

I would also be interested in helping, although my knowledge of gtk and
gdk internals is limited at the moment (although I used to know more
about it in the past).

> 
> > I think that a special OpenGL extension to X11 could be created that
> > would make this type of thing possible.
> 
> I dare to say that the timely availability of this feature will be an 
> indicator of X11's ability to meet future demands and whether it stays 
> the graphics infrastructure of choice for linux. [And similar applies to 
> gtk.]

Very true.  I've wondered why we haven't seen this yet, but with all the
politics that go into XFree86, I'm not surprised.  Hopefully Keith
Packard can gain the support he needs to make X11 continue to be the
best graphical interface.

Michael


> 
>     Christof
> 
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-- 
Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>