Re: pseudo transparency

[Sasha Vasko <sasha aftercode net>]

Owen Taylor wrote:

> Olivier Chapuis <olivier chapuis free fr> writes:
>
>
> > Yes I was not award that this may be so problematic (some Sasha remarks
> > go in the same direction). But what I want is to prevent a bad hack which
>
> > is at the present time the "only way" to implement parental relativity
> > (an application should not touch the wm frames).
> > Also, I do not want to force all window manager to implement this. 
> > I thought that _NET_SUPPORTED will be enough for this?
> > (the example in the wm-spec for _NET_SUPPORTED concerns the net wm
> > states and the wm-spec used only "The Window Manager SHOULD honor
> > _NET_WM_STATE" and not "The Window Manager MUST honor_NET_WM_STATE"). 
>
> _NET_SUPPORTED might be enough, but it's hard on applications since they
> have to deal with window managers changing.
>
> I really don't think that trying to use parent-relative backgrounds for
> this purpose makes a lot of sense:
>
>  * It requires window manager support


What I would really like to have is RootRelative background parameter.
Perhaps Keith could introduce this ?  AFAIK it would not take a major 
development effort.

>  * It interferes with the normal operations of window manager which probably
>    is setting the window background of it's borders for other reasons.
>  * It doesn't work if you want to shade the terminal background, which
>    is probably a lot more common than not.


You cannot shade but you can tint. By using GC with function set to XOR, 
you can tint background in 6 "whole" colors: red, green, blue, yellow, 
cyan, mag. by simple XFillRectangle. Works rather nicely in aterm.

> And, most importantly:
>
>  * It's not significantly cheaper. There is no need to copy the pixmap
>    with the _XROOTPMAP_ID either method unless you want to shade, and
>    with parent-relative pixmaps, you still have clear the window
>    yourself each time you are moved by the window manager.


Right, but its this tinting as described above that makes whole lot of 
difference. Most of the aterm users choose it over eterm solely becouse 
it does not abuse memory the way Eterm does when tinted.
But most likely I'll need to discontinue this feature in next version of 
AfterStep since I'll need my frame windows for something else :(


> Regards,
>                                         Owen


Sasha