"invisible" button

[geterdone]

Hi:

i would like to have a “button” somewhere in the say top right corner of my screen. This button would not be visible (i.e. if there is say a window underneath it, that window would be visible instead), but when I click on it with a mouse, something would happen (say windows would get re-arranged).

So I implemented such a thing using the FvwmButtons module - the only question to the exprets is what is the best way to make it “invisible”. From what i understand I could

1. use a patch to get translucent colorsets from fvwm-themes ( I use version 2.6.5 of fvwm)
2. somehow use the transparent colorset - I know i could get the root background to show up, but not sure how to get things to work with a more arbitrary background, say a different window, without some complexity.
3. perhaps use on-mouse-over style, so that the button would jump to the top layer when the mouse is on top of it, but would that work when other windows are in front? (this would not need any transparency, but could still work for me)

which one of these is would you use and is more efficient/less error-prone? or maybe there is a better way to accomplish what i want?

thanks in advance!

[theBlackDragon]

@geterdone

So I implemented such a thing using the FvwmButtons module - the only question to the exprets is what is the best way to make it “invisible”. From what i understand I could

1. use a patch to get translucent colorsets from fvwm-themes ( I use version 2.6.5 of fvwm)

This could work I suppose, but then you’re depending on 3rd parties to maintain patches for you.

@geterdone

2. somehow use the transparent colorset - I know i could get the root background to show up, but not sure how to get things to work with a more arbitrary background, say a different window, without some complexity.

No, it’s only pseudo transparency, all it will ever show is the desktop background.

@geterdone

3. perhaps use on-mouse-over style, so that the button would jump to the top layer when the mouse is on top of it, but would that work when other windows are in front? (this would not need any transparency, but could still work for me)

I use an EdgeCommand to pop up my FvwmButtons instance containing pager etc when I touch the pqge border where the FvwmButtons would be, like this:

[code]EdgeCommand East EdgeEastFunc
EdgeCommand South EdgeSouthFunc

Raise the ClockPanel whenever the edge is touched where it would normally be

DestroyFunc EdgeEastFunc
AddToFunc EdgeEastFunc

• I PipeRead ‘test $[pointer.y] -gt 899 && echo “All ("ClockPanel") Raise”|| echo Nop’

DestroyFunc EdgeSouthFunc
AddToFunc EdgeSouthFunc

• I PipeRead ‘test $[pointer.x] -gt 1508 && echo “All ("ClockPanel") Raise”|| echo Nop’[/code]

[geterdone]

Thanks for your answer.

I asked about this on irc, and it was confirmed to be not possible out-of-the-box right now.

I would really like the idea of having a button pop-up (or action happen) when the mouse hits the corner (extra useful with small screens!), but I also like having edge scroll enabled (in fact that was what first brought me to fvwm 8 years ago!).

What would be really ideal, would be the ability to have EdgeCommand on corners (and some x-number of pixels around the corners) but yet still have the sides respect non-zero EdgeScroll!

This is currently also not possible… Thomas mentioned that it is non-trivial to implement.