Subject: FVWM: transparency

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 00:34:47 +0000

To demonstrate what the FAQ suggests about transparency, here is a
screenshot of new colors@transparent component included in the latest
fvwm-themes cvs:

  http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/screenshots/full/transparent.png

Even more things may be done transparent, but it is enough for now.

Regards,
Mikhael.
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From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:45:40 +0100

> Even more things may be done transparent, but it is enough for now.

Cool screen shot.  Is it on the screen shots page too?  And maybe
you should add a link to the FAQ.

Ciao

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

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From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 01:16:59 +0000

> you should add a link to the FAQ.

This link is already in FAQ #0.3, and on the fvwm-themes screenshot page.
It is probably enough.

I added some more transparency yesterday, now almost everything is
partially transparent. :)

This means, if I set another background image, every pixel on the screen
is recalculated automatically. This change is slow on my 350MHz CPU
(besides the memory is fully filled by applications), but I think it
should be fast on modern CPUs.  The same thing on a different background:

  http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/screenshots/full/transparent.jpg

Regards,
Mikhael.

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From: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 13:32:07 +0100

> Even more things may be done transparent, but it is enough for now.

Yes cool screenshot. I am happy to see a transparent theme in fvwm-themes.
I've noted that Xft fonts are used too, I suggest you use Xft font in
the xp panel too :o).

For those interested by Translucency I've uploaded a patch

http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/patch/fvwm-mettise-2.5.8.patch.bz2

against 2.5.8. This patch gives Translucent menus (for an usual X
server), translucent menu and windows with the XDirectFB X server and
also some stuff I need. The patch should be applied in the 2.5.8 as
patch -p0 < the_patch. Then, read the README.PATCH ...

Regards, Olivier

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From: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:28:01 +0100

> http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/patch/fvwm-mettise-2.5.8.patch.bz2

Ooops:

 http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/patch/fvwm-metisse-2.5.8.patch.bz2

Olivier

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From: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 21:16:18 +0100

> patch -p0 < the_patch. Then, read the README.PATCH ...

No now it is -p1 ...

Olivier

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From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 02:21:47 +0000

> I've noted that Xft fonts are used too, I suggest you use Xft font in

Maybe, but I use the technique for alpha-ing texts that does not require
xft fonts, i.e. instead of setting "fgAlpha 60" that would not work for
regular fonts, I do "fgTint $[bg] 33" with less similar effect.

Basically, one can't effectivelly use fgAlpha in colorsets, because with
xft fonts this makes fg more unseen, and with regular fonts, there is no
change. Maybe for regular fonts, fgAlpha should just do "fgTint $[bg]"?
Then I may start to use fgAlpha in themes.

> patch -p0 < the_patch. Then, read the README.PATCH ...

This patch should really be reduced and divided to several patches. In
the current state (730Kb) it patches things that should never be patched.
Seeing how many problems "patch -p1 --dry-run" produces, I think I will
wait for a clean "cvs diff" patch.

Regards,
Mikhael.

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From: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 09:57:15 +0100

> wait for a clean "cvs diff" patch.

The problem is that the patch change configure.in and acconfig.h. So a
cvs diff patch will do not work if you do not run /utils/configure_dev.sh
in the place of configure and in theory you should not require
automake and autoconf for installing a package. The patch is big
because 2.5.8 is builded with automake-1.6.3 and I use automake-1.7.3
(if you want a small patch, I suggest you use 1.7.3 for building 2.5.9
:o, I do not care about the size of this patch)

What problems cause "patch -p1 --dry-run" run on a *fresh* fvwm-2.5.8
source tree?

Yes, it will be good to split the patch, however I do not have the
time to maintain 2 of 3 patches. What will happen is that I will not
maintain the translucency part of the patch and simply remove it from
my "special" cvs source tree (this part causes problem, as you noted,
because it implies patching configure.in and acconfig.h). Moreover, I
do not need/used this part of the patch.

So, if someone want to maintain the translucency part of the patch
(and can/want run the XDirectFB X server), he/she is welcome (I can
help at the beginning).

So, I will not split the patch, I will not maintain this patch as is
and I will not make more publicity for this patch. I need some part of
this patch for myself and metisse (a private project for now, but not
for so long). However, as I thought that some fvwm users like
translucency I post it to the fvwm-users list.

Regards, Olivier

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From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:55:32 +0000

> :o, I do not care about the size of this patch)

Ok, I will install the latest automake when this happens.

> What problems cause "patch -p1 --dry-run" run on a *fresh* fvwm-2.5.8

I know that it should not cause problems on released tarball, I just said
I will probably wait for a clean patch for cvs myself. :)

Ok, I did the following trick for myself:

  cvs ... checkout -d fvwm-2.5.8 -r version-2_5_8 fvwm
  tar xzf fvwm-2.5.8.tar.gz
  patch -p0 <fvwm-metisse-2.5.8.patch
  cd fvwm-2.5.8
  rm depcomp  # should be in .cvsignore
  cvs diff >fvwm-metisse-dev.patch
  diff -u -N /dev/null README.PATCH >>fvwm-metisse-dev.patch
  diff -u -N /dev/null libs/FTransparency.h >>fvwm-metisse-dev.patch
  diff -u -N /dev/null libs/FTransparency.c >>fvwm-metisse-dev.patch

The resulting patch is here:

  http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/patch/fvwm-metisse-dev.patch.bz2

It is still problematic to be applied to cvs, but less problematic,
and it should be easier for someone to fix this. I also removed all
unrelated files manually and here is the reduced version (it now seem
to include only 2 separate things, function grabs and translucency):

  http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/patch/fvwm-metisse-dev2.patch.bz2

> translucency I post it to the fvwm-users list.

What I meant is that some parts of the patch, like changes to INSTALL,
fvwm-menu-desktop, system.fvwm2rc-sample-95 and other files may be just
commited into the mainline.

The pure translucency part of the patch does not seem to be very big, so
someone (not me) may update man pages and try to push it into mainline.

Regards,
Mikhael.

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From: Remko Troncon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 15:26:28 +0100

Olivier,

> For those interested by Translucency I've uploaded a patch

Exteremely cool to finally share your (huge) patch :) I just tested it,
and it works perfect.
Too bad my card isn't supported by XDirectFB, so i have to stick with
the 'basic' translucency of menus, in which i am a bit disappointed. It
just isn't perfect, but unfortunately it won't get any better under XFree 
:-(

I suppose the XDirectFB translucency supports updates of the background ?

cheers,
Remko