Re: Transparent background in window?

[Sven Neumann <sven gimp org>]

Hi,

Brett Granger <bdgranger alum mit edu> writes:

> But I am not interested in non-rectangular windows via the shape
> extension (which I have used quite a bit) -- I am interested in
> translucent rectangular (alpha-blended) top level windows, preferably
> with minimal modification to X or to GTK.  There have been previous
> discussions on this list (or was it the app-devel list?) about this,
> indicating that it is possible with DirectFB or perhaps faked using a
> patch from Owen.  Seems like it ought to be possible to create
> something using the render extension, but performance might be an
> issue?  

in GTK+-DirectFB each window has a global opacity that can be adjusted
and you can create windows with true alpha channel. Due to the limited
nature of the GDK API (GdkColor doesn't have an alpha value) you have
to resort to do DirectFB calls in order to modify the alpha channel.

> I'm working in a remote display environment, so DirectFB might not
> really be feasible...

you are right, DirectFB only works on a local display (so far). Well,
the latest CVS version has an SDL backend so you can run DirectFB on
top of SDL on top of X11 over the network but that will certainly ruin
the performance.


Salut, Sven