Re: RFC: new features

[Christian Hergert <chris dronelabs com>]

On Wed, 2012-01-18 at 09:47 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-01-16 at 13:08 +0000, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > On Fri, 2012-01-13 at 17:34 -0800, Christian Hergert wrote:
> > > Hopefully this isn't getting old, but I'm sort of just throwing these
> > > out there as I think of them.
> > > 
> > <snip>
> > > BACKGROUND OPACITY
> > > It would be nice to have the ability to alter the opacity of a window
> > > without altering the opacity of GdkWindow'd widgets inside it. This is
> > > useful for utility windows that float over a primary window. Right now,
> > > you have to handle changes with the visual and/or screen and modify the
> > > background yourself. This breaks possible theming and is tedious.
> > > http://www.pixelmator.com/ is a good example of why this might be
> > > useful.
> > 
> > Had that problem in the Wacom calibration screen. I wanted the elements
> > to be opaque but on a translucent dark background. It wasn't possible
> > without resorting to hacks (such as having 2 windows, one translucent
> > with the black background, one with the opaque elements on a transparent
> > background).
> 
> Can't you just make the window an RGBA window with a semi-transparent
> color on the toplevel, but normal bg colors on the other widgets?

That sounds about right. If I understand the problem correctly, you have
to make sure the visual supports RGBA and then update the GdkRGBA on
style changes. My argument was that it would be nice if this was done
for us with a "background-opacity" property between 0.0 and 1.0.

-- Christian