From: Hazen B. <hba...@ma...> - 2010-03-19 00:13:35
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Alan W. Irwin wrote: > > For my two X servers > > display -immutable test.png.2 > > gives me (a), i.e., a semi-transparent view where I can see the desktop > underneath the image. This is slightly off topic, but this effect really doesn't seem to work that well on Gnome, at least for me. This plot has a completely opaque background: ./examples/c/x01c -dev pngcairo -bg 0000FF_0.6 -o ex1.png display -immutable ex1.png This plot has a completely transparent background: ./examples/c/x01c -dev pngcairo -bg 0000FF_0.4 -o ex1.png display -immutable ex1.png This plot is also completely opaque: ./examples/c/x01c -dev svgcairo -bg 0000FF_0.2 -o ex1.svg display -immutable ex1.svg As is this plot: ./examples/c/x01c -dev svg -bg 0000FF_0.2 -o ex1.svg display -immutable ex1.svg I'm running GNOME 2.41.1 / ubuntu 8.10. Even further off topic, the effect is not that great with the terminal program either. It seems to handle a variable transparency background but you will always see the desktop background, even if there is something else (window, icon, etc) underneath it. So, while I agree that we should support this feature I don't think it is going to be that cool for most linux users for a while yet. -Hazen |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2010-03-19 00:59:47
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On 2010-03-18 20:13-0400 Hazen Babcock wrote: > So, while I agree that we should support this feature I don't think it > is going to be that cool for most linux users for a while yet. Although, I don't have any of the transparency troubles you mentioned for your X server, I do have some mediocre performance (on both X servers) when using "display -immutable", i.e., I have noticed a slowdown when switching between X windows. Such transparency issues probably depend very much on your X stack version and your hardware. X is very slow right now for any special effects because of all the X stack reorganization that has been going on for the last several years. However, my impression is that X stack reorganization has finally been completed, and at the same time there are a tremendous number of developers working on X who are taking advantage of that reorganization. As a result, I believe from now on things should rapidly get a lot better in terms of performance and getting the many outstanding X bugs fixed. So my hope is that transparency effects will "just work" soon for the more common video chipsets (Intel, AMD/ATI, Nvidia). Also, I absolutely agree with your conclusion. We want true transparency capability as an option which will become more and more relevant as the handling of transparency effects keeps being improved by the X developers. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |