Quoting Nicolas Roard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Now, window transparency is not possible under X11 without the last > Xorg thingy stuff.. > (I mean real transparency, not 1-bit transparency -- that's already > implemented in backart, just use the clear color). > > > Then I was already thinking about things such as displaying miniaturized > > versions of the displayed content in the shelf (e.g. a miniaturized version > of > > rich text) - this can be done very easily thanks to PostScript's concept of > > graphics scaling. Again, no big deal. > > > > To sum it up: I'll try to propose on the GNUstep-dev list to add window > > transparency to the backends - this would enable us to do graphically great > > things. Also, if you provide me with details on how the app is supposed to > > behave, no problem, I'll make it. > > The problem is not to add them in the backends, but add transparency > support in X11. As of now, I'm not sure how well that is supported, I > heard that it was rather dependant of your graphic card and slow and > bugged. Though obviously that could be nice to have in the backends > anyway ! (and probably isn't too much work, but well, need to check > Xorg's documentation I guess) > > -- > Nicolas Roard > "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." > -Arthur C. Clarke >
I looked into X transparency, and of course, the exactly X-ish way: why make it simple. Doing transparency requires you to have the Composite extension, then have an external compositing manager running and basically program all the alpha blending yourself (if you're the guy doing the compositing manager). I can't stand X - it's time has run out at least 10 years ago. Then it should have silently died and some other, much much lighter (e.g. DirectFB) approach should have taken over. Unfortunatelly, people still use this ugly piece of bloated ***t and this will remain so until the foreseeable future... I've already begun to strongly consider programming a DirectFB backend for GNUstep... -- Saso
