I was wondering if it was possible to use composition on anything else than entire windows, eg: on menu’s, window borders, etc.
Would it be possible to script something like that? Or would support have to be coded into Fvwm to allow that kind of stuff?
Its possible to scroll on a title bar, on my config…
You should do a search on gentoo forums, there are several posts about “settrans.pl”, a perl script wich realises this. You also need to add something to your fvwm /lib dir, but I don’t know anymore wich file… Hold on, this one: jefklak.suidzer0.org/downloads/fvwm/FvwmTransset 
there’s the settrans.pl script: (add to your .fvwm2 dir)
jefklak.suidzer0.org/downloads/fvwm/settrans.pl
you’ll also need to create a trans.defaults file, something like this
WM_NAME:Liste de contacts:0.7
WM_CLASS:xterm:0.9
WM_CLASS:xmms:0.6
WM_CLASS:gaim:0.9
WM_CLASS:gFTP:0.9
WM_CLASS:xchat-2:0.9
finally, linking it to your scroll wheel & menu bar window:
Mouse 4 T N Exec exec ${HOME}/.fvwm/settrans.pl $[w.id] -
Mouse 5 T N Exec exec ${HOME}/.fvwm/settrans.pl $[w.id] +
Don’t forget to start + I Module FvwmTransset on startup
Hopefully it works for you!
You’ll need a patched version of transset.c, wich uses an extra argument. I’ve posted it already somewhere around here.
I think you misunderstood my question, I know I can make some windows transparent and I’ve seen your scipt ( nice work btw ), but what I was really getting at is if I can make for example only the titlebar transparent using the composite extension without at once turning the entire window transparent…
xtransset was just a hack by keithp to show everyone how it looks.My understanding is that the developers will need to add code the their projects to support the true transparency xorg gives. I only know of one app that does it, and that is konsole for kde.
-Joe
oh lol sorry blackdragon, I didn’t get that
I don’t think its possible with the current xcompmgr, I also like to only have some windows with shadows, not my toolbars e.d. - you can’t choose this eighter (yet)…
Oh well, knowing the speed of Fvwm development it won’t take long before those features find their way into the development release I’ll wager
I can only hope. My non-python programming skills are nonexistant.
Compositioning manager allows this, it’s up to application to implement that. Metacity has translucent titlebars when xcompmgr is running, there are some other features if it’s compiled with it’s own compositor (but it’s broken).
As i’m a bit tired from gnome and metacity i’m looking for a new window manager.
I’ve seen some fvwm screenshots featuring menu with ‘true transparency’ like this one, the thing i can’t achieve neither with gnome nor waimea nor pekwm.
Is this fvwm feature or created using xcompmgr, or a clever fake (i can make a screenshot like that also in waimea 
)?
It’s a clever fake, so unfortunatly it only works on the menu, you also need some patches to pull this trick off, unless you’re using Gentoo, because then they are included by default.
I’ve put the patches online on my site, you could also try to find them on a Gentoo mirror, some other sources also might have them, though I wouldn’t know which ones…
I took a look on the README and the patch and i must admit that this is quite real transparency, afaik compositioning manager does the same, but in a more complicated way 
What i thought as a fake was making one screenshot whith a window but no menu, take away the window, set the first screenshot as background, then open the menu and take the second screenshot which shows a translucent menu over a ‘window’ that is actually a background image.
Now it’s a battle between window grouping in pekwm and eye-candy in fvwm for me. 
Also configuring pekwm seems to be much more easier than fvwm.
I don’t know what you mean by window grouping so I cannot guess if it would be possible with Fvwm even though I suppose that it would be possible, the things that aren’t possible with Fvwm are pretty limited… Of course, there’s not saying how much work it would be to implement the feature you want…
About window grouping: http://pekwm.org/documentation/include/html/usage/grouping.html
How it looks like:
In PekWM: http://pekwm.org/screenshots/screenshots/helix.png
In FluxBox: http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php
