Subject: eye-candy enhancement idea

From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 15:42:04 -0400

Hey folks

I was looking at the AfterStep web page, and one feature they have
is transparent backgrounds for titlebars, borders and menus. There's
a screenshot at:

http://www.afterstep.org/screenshots/[email-masked]/Translunacy-big.jpg

Looks quite cool.

Another thing I was looking at was Enlightenment, which allows several
effects when moving windows. The usual rubberband and opaque styles,
but also a transparent move effect, where the window in motion becomes
transparent during the move. That's the entire window and its
decorations. This is quite a resource hog, but it set me to thinking
how cool it would look if it was available as a style. One could
even have all windows except the currently focussed one be transparent.

OK, enough afternoon daydreaming, back to work.

Cheers
Ric

Richard J Lister, Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences
Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA
Phone: +1 202-687 2878
Email: [email-masked] 
Web: http://www.giccs.georgetown.edu/~ric/
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From: Tomas Ogren <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 21:50:50 +0200

> http://www.afterstep.org/screenshots/[email-masked]/Translunacy-big.jpg

But do you want to use it?

> how cool it would look if it was available as a style.

That one is a gross hack. Raster achived that by copying the whole
screen into a new buffer, infront of all other windows and poking around
with raw graphics there.

It's not too bad a resource hog.. it works just fine on the SPARCstation
LX's over here (about a 486/33 or so if you compare). Opening menus in E
has an annoying latency though..

/Tomas
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From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 15:57:04 -0400

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999 21:50:50 +0200
Tomas Ogren <[email-masked]> 
> But do you want to use it?

Yeah, I'd use transparent decorations with transparent rxvts.

> screen into a new buffer, infront of all other windows and poking around

Ewww.

> has an annoying latency though..

I would definitely describe it as useable on my P200, though it was
noticably slower than opaque or rubber-band moves. I found that menu
latency depended quite a bit on the theme being used.

Cheers
Ric

---

From: [email-masked] (Paul D. Smith)
Date: 10 Jun 1999 16:01:06 -0400

%% Richard Lister <[email-masked]> writes:

  rl> OK, enough afternoon daydreaming, back to work.

Typically the attitude of the FVWM-workers when presented with _serious_
eye candy is, "if you want E you know where to get it!" :)  That's not
to say that individual bits of candy won't be considered.

Although it's not written down anywhere, the vision for FVWM focuses on
(a) high configurability and (b) smaller size / good speed.  We add fun
features which still allow us to sleep at night, given those goals :).

However, IIRC the "transparent window move" thing came up on the list
last fall and was soundly rejected when it became apparent what was
involved, and how powerful a system you had to have to make it useful.

Transparent title bars haven't been discussed, I don't think.

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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:05:36 -0400

> Yeah, I'd use transparent decorations with transparent rxvts.

With white text over yellow backgrounds as shown in the example?

Its hard enough to come up with the 3 or 4 contrasting colors needed
in menus now.  (Ignoring gradients and pixmaps.)

IMHO, the screen shot is well named, "lunacy".

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From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:09:56 -0400

On 10 Jun 1999 16:01:06 -0400
[email-masked] (Paul D. Smith) 
> features which still allow us to sleep at night, given those goals :).

Oh, I agree. Just batting about a few ideas.

> involved, and how powerful a system you had to have to make it useful.

Yup, if it involves ridiculous hacks.

> Transparent title bars haven't been discussed, I don't think.

Might be straightforward. There's transpant background code in FvwmButtons
already.

Ric

---

From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:12:51 -0400

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:05:36 -0400
Dan Espen <[email-masked]> 
> IMHO, the screen shot is well named, "lunacy".

:-)

The creator of that example is quite obviously either colourblind
or insane. I tend to have white text and very dark backgrounds on
everything, including the root window.
Ric

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:46:17 -0400

> everything, including the root window.

I tend toward dark backgrounds,  but if its  an image, its got to have
some lighter colors somewhere.

Even still, you need 3 or 4 contrasting colors in a menu.  The example
menu is black and white, but no item in the menu is selected or grayed
out.  It still looks nuts to me.

My  background changes every hour under  cron  control, with about 500
images in use.

Having cron   alter  my menus  on  an  hourly basis  to   go with  the
backgrounds ... AARGH!

---

From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:49:59 -0400

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999 16:46:17 -0400
Dan Espen <[email-masked]> 
> Having cron   alter  my menus  on  an  hourly basis  to   go with  the

Sounds to me like an idea for a new module ... :-)

Ric

---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 00:57:46 +0300 (IDT)

> > > IMHO, the screen shot is well named, "lunacy".

I think the accent is on *Trans*lunacy. All rainbow colors are in the
background image, how funny. Actually, "smoked glass" fixes most of the
problems here.

> some lighter colors somewhere.

There are many nice tiles/images (1/3 of all supplied with Eterm, for
example), which do not include light colors. White or pastel foregrounds
are ok on them.

> out. It still looks nuts to me.

I agree with you. Consider also menu-icons with transparent backgrounds..
It is hard to choose a background color to satisfy all foreground colors.
Thinking about this, it is good to have relative fore-colors (XOR-ed?)
and then changing a background color can automatically update all
foreground colors. Menu-icons are still a problem (XPM only supports  
absolute colors and an icon was not designed to change them anyway).          

> My background changes every hour under cron  control, with about 500

Nice idea. The hardest part here is 500 nice images. Are they tiles or
large images? Hmm, if one image is 100Kb, 500 are 50Mb. Managing this is
not easy, I suppose. :)

> Having cron alter  my menus  on  an  hourly basis  to   go with  the

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Jason L Tibbitts III <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Jun 1999 17:15:03 -0500

>>>>> "PDS" == Paul D Smith <[email-masked]> writes:

PDS> Transparent title bars haven't been discussed, I don't think.

I think they'd be useful only if they are really transparent.  The
eterm-like pseudo-transparency only shows you manipulated bits of the
background which doesn't give you any additional real estate.  If you
actually get some screen space back then it might be worthwhile.

 - J<

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 22:28:36 -0400

> background image, how funny. Actually, "smoked glass" fixes most of the

I didn't think so.  It looks pretty washed out to me.  But these are
opinions, I'm sure it in the eye of the beholder.

> example), which do not include light colors. White or pastel foregrounds

Tiles I believe.  Last time I had to use CDE, I was impressed with its
tiles.  If I remember right, they get  an amazing variety with 2 color
dithered tiles.  Looking thru my copy of Eterm backgrounds, (it may be
old), only BladeRunner  seems to be uniformly dark.   So dark, I can't
see the image.

> absolute colors and an icon was not designed to change them anyway).         

I'm not following the XOR-ed part.  XOR on pseudocolor displays produce
random colors.

> large images? Hmm, if one image is 100Kb, 500 are 50Mb. Managing this is

All images.  Most of them large.  Only 2 are tiled onto the background,
most are streched at display time to fill the screen.

Current total size is 60MB.

I  find managing it interesting.   The images serve as backgrounds and
xscreensaver hacks.   I also  have  some perl  that builds fvwm2 menus
from the "database" for manually setting the  root, or just displaying
individual images.  About 20 of us run  the same cron script, every so
often I get a call from one of the 20 saying  how much they appreciate
the show.

Checking file system dates, it looks like its taken 5  years to get to
500 images.  Thats only 10 a month (in round numbers).  I find APOD to
be one of my favorite sources.

With enough  interest, I could  be bribed to share  the scripts.  They
are not terribly complex, but they did take some time to work out.

---

From: Tim Phipps <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 10:48:56 +0100

Richard Lister wrote:
> is transparent backgrounds for titlebars, borders and menus.
> Looks quite cool.

Well, we have different definitions of cool then ;-).  Another point is
that I've never seen a transparent terminal emulator, they all seem to
be hacks that copy the root pixmap into their background (which means
they should use the same visual as the root, rxvt doesn't and fails
dismally).  Real transparency is what you have with shaped icons and
oclock and can be useful.  Fake transparency falls over as soon as you
move a pseudo-transparent window over a normal window, I don't think
you'll find many screenshots with this situation, it looks too bad.

As Jason said: real transparency could be useful for the window
decorations. It would require the shape extension, we could even do
shading/tinting by stippling the shape mask before drawing the title
text and gadgets into it. If this is going to happen I'd rather see it
in a module.

> but also a transparent move effect,
                              ^^^^^^
It is just an effect, it's not the real window that you're moving.  For
me this makes translucent moves the same as rubberband moves i.e the
server is grabbed (your mpeg playback is halted) and you can't see what
the desktop will look like when you complete the move. The only
advantage of rubberband moves is that it's light weight and if you abort
nothing has to be redrawn. Real opaque moves have the advantage of not
stopping any other graphics activity and you can see exactly what the
result will be (very useful if you're moving a window underneath
another).  I think it's bloat and it's in the right place already (i.e.
in E and not fvwm).

Cheers,
Tim.

PS anyone know why Eterm can't just copy the root pixmap? It needs
_XROOTPMAP_ID which means I have to use the brain dead Esetroot.  If it
has to be told why doesn't it use _XSETROOT_ID like every other root
painting program does?
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From: Greg Badros <[email-masked]>
Date: 11 Jun 1999 10:34:59 -0700

> actually get some screen space back then it might be worthwhile.

Shaped windows can give squashed titlebar look that saves real screen
real-estate as the titlebar is smaller than it otherwise would be.  I
think twm was the first to have the option.  Looks something like:

|-------------|
| Title here  |       EXTRA BACKGROUND VISIBLE (via X, not hacks)
-------------------------------------------------
| window contents here                          |
. . . . .
|                                               |
-------------------------------------------------

Greg

---

From: Peter Daum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 22:59:24 +0200

Greg Badros <[email-masked]> wrote:
[...]

Hi,

wasn't fvwm originally based on twm? What happened to this feature?
This really is more than just eye candy. When you have lots of
overlapping windows it makes it _much_ easier to get to a specific
window with one click. I personally had been hesitating for a pretty
long time before I switched from twm to fvwm, mostly because fvwm
didn't have shaped titlebars.

Regards,
                Peter
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From: Richard Lister <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 15:29:31 -0400

On Sat, 12 Jun 1999 22:59:24 +0200
Peter Daum <[email-masked]> 
> wasn't fvwm originally based on twm? What happened to this feature?

Maybe it was added to *twm after fvwm spun off? Or perhaps Rob
had a good reason for leaving it out (bloat?).

> didn't have shaped titlebars.

I seem to remember this issue being discussed on the list quite a
long time ago, but I can't find it in the archives. Anyone remember
the conclusions last time?

There's a nice screenshot demostrating this feature in vtwm at

  http://www.visi.com/~hawkeyd/graphics/vtwm-95ish.gif

Cheers
Ric

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 16:52:00 -0400

> the conclusions last time?

I don't know if my memory is any better than  yours, but I remember it
the same  way.  It was rejected  as bloat.  I certainly don't remember
who the rejector was.

As I remember, it was a request, not a patch.  (I think theres a big
difference.)

The bloat rejection I remember best was the requests that lead to the
creation of fvwm95.

I'm  not voting for or against  shaped  titlebars with these comments.
I'm sure  I wouldn't use them.  I  almost never stack windows,  and my
windows are almost always full screen height.  But I don't think I'm a
typical user.