Transparency not working and how to get translucency?

Hello all. On my Gentoo FVWM, transparency won’t work properly and I would also like to know how to get translucency. The attached shot of the panel illustrates what it turns up looking like after a while. In the beginning it’s transparent but it just gets covered up like this. Any ideas?

http://img34.exs.cx/img34/3858/screwypanel3yp.jpg

For the “overlap effect” are you using plain Transparent or Roottransparent in your Colorsets? If you got the one try switching to the other, I thought Transparent still had some problems like the one you mention.

To use translucency just substitue Transparent with Translucent, note that this only works on menu’s though…

Okay thank you very much that worked. :slight_smile:

I am also having a similar problem. This is my colorset

Colorset 12 fg Black, Transparent

This brings me a transparent background on my pager, but when i change pages, the background for that page turns black… I know it’s supposed to be “bg Transparent” but when I do that, the whole pager’s background is black to start with… and RootTransparent yields me with a gray background. I’m still quite new to FVWM, and i’m not sure if my syntax is off or what, but any help would be much appreciated.

thanks!

rezon: What distro are you using? You’ll need the translucency-patch unless you’re using Gentoo where portage patches for you.

i am using Gentoo.

And I suppose you have the ~x86-version as well?

Translucency needs x.org 6.8.x instead of XFree4.

There needs to be an additional entry in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

     Section "Extensions"
             Option "Composite" "Enable"
             Option "RENDER" "Enable"
     EndSection

On my System (SIS-graficscard in framebuffermode) I also need to set

 Option "no_accel"

in Section “Device” when using shadows, or Background-Images are not set correctly.

The composite-extensions are experimental, so expect errors.

Greets, Mark

You don’t need X.org for the translucency on the menu’s, you only need a patch that fakes translucency and that’s applied by default on Gentoo systems, you’ll also find it in different locations around the net (my site for example).

As for the grey/black background problem, does it occur everywhere you use transparency? In that case it’s probably because you don’t use a compatible background-setter, try Esetroot or fvwm-root (there are other too, just search around a bit or test for yourself)

ok thanks. i’ll give these tips a shot when i have a chance.