Arch Linux

junkie

Member

From: Hungary

Registered: 2011-10-12

Posts: 20

Transparency issues

Hi guys,

I have trouble making the background of Conky and Tilda transparent. Both have a solid black background, when they should be transparent, so I guess the problem is elsewhere.

I have Blackbox as WM, and xcompmgr does compositing. I can see shadows around windows, and can make a window transparent / translucent with transset-df. Xdpyinfo says Composite module is enabled in X.

Since installing xcompmgr bsetbg can no longer set the wallpaper (no effect), I have tried hsetroot, feh and xv to set the wallpaper, all of them work fine, the wallpaper shows up.

Not starting xcompmgr in the session makes no difference, black backgrounds remain in Conky and Tilda with and without xcompmgr.

I don't know about Tilda, but I'm sure as hell Conky should be transparent out-of-the-box, right?

Any ideas please?

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Transparency issues

As far as I understand things BlackBox was last updated 6 years ago and is a dead project and does have some problems with transparency. That could be your problem. If I were you and you really want blackbox then install fluxbox instead, which is very similar and under active development. It does not have any transparency issues. See the wiki.

---

Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

junkie

Member

From: Hungary

Registered: 2011-10-12

Posts: 20

Re: Transparency issues

The point in Linux is that you can make ANYTHING work, right?
I prefer Blackbox.

And I've found a way to get EXACTLY what I was aiming for.

Tools used:

devilspie (doh..)
transset-df

Terminal is xterm. Notice that only the "embedded" terminal is transparent, if I start "xterm" regularly, it is just an ordinary window.

How is it done?

Install devilspie (and terminal and compositor if you don't have one)

# pacman -S devilspie xcompmgr transset-df xterm

Edit ~/.xinitrc so that devilspie, the compositor, and the terminal start up after login

# start the compositer
xcompmgr -c &

# start devilspie so we can alter windows
devilspie -a &

# start xterm - notice the custom window title set with option -T !
xterm -g 80x20 -T desktopterm &

# start your window manager here
exec blackbox

Create the file: ~/.devilspie/xterm.ds
This will search for a window with "desktopterm" as the title, and remove borders and titlebar, pin it so it is on every workspace, make it stay on the desktop, always under every single other window, geometry sets position to [20,20] from the desktop's top left corner, and transset-df is executed, setting true window transparency, in this case to opacity 0.5

(if
        (is (window_name) "desktopterm" )
                (begin
                        (undecorate)
                        (pin)
                        (below)
                        (geometry "+20+20")
                        (spawn_sync (str "transset-df -i " (window_xid) " 0.5") )
                )
        )
)

Create / edit the file ~/.Xdefaults to set colors in xterm

xterm*background: Black
xterm*foreground: White

Restart X and enjoy.

EDIT: this doesn't really solve the original problem: that the only way to have any kind of transparency is with transset-df, but combined with devilspie it is manageable. I am moving on to setting up Conky now.

Last edited by junkie (2011-10-22 09:35:07)