Arch Linux

gunnihinn

Member

From: Torreón, Mexico

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 81

Transparency and window managers

I'm trying to figure out how a window manager handles transparency in it's clients, and if it's done through Xlib or something similar. If anyone here has some idea how this works, any little explanation or a pointer to a guide would be much appreciated.

Reason I'm asking is that I've got this little program that uses the Cairo library (more specifically the function set_source_rgba from that library) to set the alpha value of a window. This works fine in Openbox with xcompmgr, but I'm running Evilwm with xcompmgr and all I get is a gray background.

Now, the "grayness" of the background changes depending on the alpha value, so I think the function is actually doing it's job properly, but that Evilwm either does things a bit specially or doesn't support transparency. In either case I'd like to try and fix it, but am at a bit of a loss as where to start.

peets

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2007-01-11

Posts: 936

Website

Re: Transparency and window managers

WMs should not touch transparency (you can add transparency to a 20-year old WM using stuff like xcompmgr).

xcompmgr has to interface with the WM though, so I think it expects it to follow certain standards or make certain properties available. That might be where your problem lies.