True Transparency for aterm [Solved]

housetroll0 · n00b Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 3

Anybody looking to waste a little time? I have a challenge for you.
I am looking to make aterm truely transparent so that I can see my really slick screensaver that is running as my desktop background.
Making a screensaver run as a background was easy enough, just add to your .bash_profile the command to run your screensaver. I used
echo >> "/usr/lib/misc/xscreensaver/helios --root --nice --speed 3 --cameraspeed 1 --maxfps 20 &" >> ~/.bash_profile
Most of the options are to make the eyecandy not take up so much processer. From conky I can see that it typically uses less than 2% cpu for my Dell precision M65.

This is not truely setting my background to the screensaver, but constantly writing over it. So, when I use
$ aterm -tr
to get a transparent aterm, I do not see the screensaver but instead the wallpaper background (currently an ugly grey).

I have a thought on how I can get the screensaver to show up with aterm, but don't know exactly how to do it. I would try to pipe the screensaver to file or pseudofile and have the background constantly be updated with it. Anyone with any ideas, solutions?

-Troll

P.S.- Yes I know I'll be eating resources like mad, its just a mountain to climb because its there. I need a sherpa.

RageOfOrder · Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:06 pm Post subject:

As far as I know you'll need something like xcompmgr, or Compiz/Beryl if you have KDE or GNOME.
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i92guboj · Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:24 pm Post subject: Re: True Transparency for aterm

housetroll0 · n00b Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 3

Ok, thanks for the info. I just got comfortable with fluxbox so I don't want to switch WM again just yet. I emerged xcompmgr, it looks like it will work--after I get this no composite extension error corrected. Until then I'll consider this topic solved....
6th pink, RageofOrder,
Thanks alot.

Sadako · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 6:16 am Post subject: Re: True Transparency for aterm

i92guboj · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject:

Nice, believe it or not, urxvt is about the only term emulator I use. But I'm not much into eyecandy, I like it better than any other term just because it's better unicode support, its nice rendering of the fonts and its perl extension and keysyms that I use intensively. Low memory consumption and the capability to use a lot of cliente consoles attached to a single daemon are interesting features as well. There is nothing about "true transparency" or "composite" in the changelog and I can't seem to find it in the manpage (maybe it is not up to date, I don't know). I think mrxvt has built-in composite support, but did not know a thing about urxvt. Would you mind telling us which config option should we look into?

Thanks.

Sadako · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 1:41 pm Post subject:

Okay, that was really annoying.

I don't use urxvt myself, so trying to figure out how the damn thing works is a pain in the ass, as it's not mentioned anywhere.

First, you need rxvt-unicode compiled with the truetype use flag enabled, which shoudn't be a problem for most, but had me scratching my head as to why the "-depth 32" option, which is what you need to enable compositing, returned a

i92guboj · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:02 pm Post subject:

Thank you for the quick response.

I inmediatly though about compositing. I am not sure but for what it seems that alpha transparency can be used only in RGBA visuals and it might, probably, be something similar to the shaped transparency that some wm's like fvwm feature on some modules, that can show the windows below them, faking some kind of advanced false transparency. If this is the same, it is still a fake, though a clever one. You can make sure by puting the transparent term in front of an mplayer window while a video is running, you will see the mplayer thru a shaped bar in fvwm for example, but the video under that shaped thingie will not update.

This is just my assumption, I never used that feature and didn't even know it existed.

Sadako · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

Just tested this out, and placing the urxvt window over mplayer's just gives an ugly black box where they overlap, and the drop shadows make it even worse.

However,if I try it mplayer with "-vo x11" instead of the default xv overlay, you can see the video playing in the terminal's background, and there is very little difference with regards to cpu usage.

It's quite nice actually, here's a quick screenie (beware, large file ~700 Kb).
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widremann · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 1314