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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: True transparency ala MacOSX
From:       Matt Newell <newellm () proaxis ! com>
Date:       2003-03-13 1:38:22
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On Thursday 13 March 2003 06:58 am, Michael A Nachbaur wrote:
> I wanted to know how difficult it would be to implement true transparency
> in applications like Konsole.  From what I can tell, these applications
> simply set their background to a region of the desktop wallpaper, and set
> some color tinting to their image.  What would it take to implement true
> transparency, similar to how MacOSX does?  I presume OSX uses OpenGL or
> some other library to set an alpha mask for a given window (or region of a
> window), but with it you can see through one window and into a window
> behind it.
>
> This is really convenient, especially when you have a terminal window open
> above a web browser or email window; or have multiple overlapped windows,
> allowing you to do your work in one window while seeing the results of a
> compile or some other long-running process in the background.


Well, maybe my post will provide a little more hope than theirs.
Currently, X doesn't support translucent windows, but Keith Packard is
on top of it, just like he was on top of AA fonts! If you go to 
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/talks/KeithPackardAls2000/index.html
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/
http://www.eax.com/render/
you can read about the new X rendering model that Keith has been working on.  
It might be a good idea for people to start working on it before it is 
released in X.  So that KDE will be a step ahead:)  

Can/will the new KPainter be able to take advantage of the Render extension, 
Anyone?

Matt
 
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