Various issues with decorations

Configuration Decorations and bindings
1

So, I have a very old configuration, and some of the colors and transparency settings just … don’t work. Here are my colorset definitions:

# Window Colorsets
###########
Colorset 1 fg #0afbff, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint white 20
Colorset 2 fg #0afbff, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint #091251 05
Colorset 3 fg black, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint white 20
Colorset 4 fg black, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint white 10
Colorset 5 fg black, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint white 35
Colorset 6 fg #0afbff, bg grey, NoShape, RootTransparent buffer, Tint white 10
Colorset 7 fg rgb:1B/34/EE, bg rgb:09/12/51, RootTransparent buffer, Translucent rgb:09/12/51 60, ParentRelative
#  Style * MenuColorset 7, PopupOffset 0 100, AnimationOff
Colorset 8 RootTransparent buffer, fg #0afbff, ParentRelative
Colorset 9 RootTransparent, fg #0afbff, bg average, Tint #091251 40, Translucent #091251 20, ParentRelative
Colorset 10 Pixmap $[fvwm_wallpapers]/3117-darksea.png
Colorset 11 Pixmap $[fvwm_wallpapers]/spiralspiel.png
Colorset 12 Pixmap $[fvwm_wallpapers]/silver.png
Colorset 13 Pixmap $[fvwm_img]/homeworld/HW2_05_Mothership_1.png
Colorset 20 RootTransparent, fg rgb:1b/34/ee, bg average, Tint black 20, bgTint black 20

Now, from my decorations file, I have a few settings, such as:

Style * Hilight Colorset 9, ParentalRelativity

From the above, this should make the title bar of my active window dark gray, semi-transparent, with a light teal title text. This has never been the case. The text is always black, which makes it impossible to read against a dark background. Why is this?
Next, there’s the FvwmPager swallowed by ButtonBar. Here’s the config:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#------------------ FvwmPager:  Swallowed by ButtonBar
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Style "FvwmPagerPager" NoTitle, NoHandles, Sticky, WindowListSkip, CirculateSkip

DestroyModuleConfig FvwmPagerPager: *
*FvwmPagerPager: UseSkipList
*FvwmPagerPager: Colorset * 2
*FvwmPagerPager: HighlightColorset * 5
*FvwmPagerPager: Fore Translucent midnightblue 60
*FvwmPagerPager: Font "xft:monospace:Bold:pixelsize=10;-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
*FvwmPagerPager: Hilight Translucent lightgrey 60
*FvwmPagerPager: MiniIcons
*FvwmPagerPager: Balloons
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonColorset * 3
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColorsets 4 4
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonFont "xft:monospace:Medium:pixelsize=10;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
*FvwmPagerPager: Geometry 319x69+5000+5000
#WIN 1
#*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white Blue4
#FVWM 1
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white SlateBlue
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 0 Main
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 1 Internet
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 2 Games
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 3 Work
*FvwmPagerPager: SmallFont "xft:sans-serif:Medium:pixelsize=8;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

The problem here is that the Hilight color is now a default light gray, and the tooltip balloons no longer appear. This was after the recent update (this week) to fvwm3-1.1.1.

I have the same problem with a lack of transparency and defaulting to light gray in FvwmMenu. Here’s the config for the menu decoration:

MenuStyle * fvwm
MenuStyle * font "xft:TeX Gyre Heros:size=12"
MenuStyle * Foreground rgb:1b/34/ee, Background rgb:09/12/51, Translucent rgb:19/19/70 50
MenuStyle * ActiveFore #0AFBFF, HilightBack #0F1F97
MenuStyle * MenuColorset 20, PopupOffset 0 100, AnimationOn

MenuStyle * Greyed grey60  # default is invisible on backgroud grey80
MenuStyle * VerticalItemSpacing 2 4, VerticalTitleSpacing 2 4

CopyMenuStyle * winops

MenuStyle winops font "xft:TeX Gyre Heros:size=12"
MenuStyle winops TitleWarpOff

MenuStyle winops VerticalItemSpacing 1 2, VerticalTitleSpacing 1 2

Again, the Hilight color defaults to light gray, with no transparency.

Thanks for the help fixing this!

EE

2

If you want to use transparency/translucid effects, shadows, blurs and so on you need a compositor like Picom.

Fake transparencies (like in rxvt) can also be achieved in some places. For that check the man pages.

3

Hi lgso,

I’m running picom:

 $ ps ax | grep picom
 6086 ?        Ssl    5:35 picom -b

This was an issue a couple weeks ago when conky stopped working right and I discovered that picom was crashing due to a few missing .conf settings, but it’s been fixed now. I can understand how some of these transparencies not working (for years, really) might have been due to a missing compositor, but now I have one running and they still don’t work.

Thanks for the help,
EE

4

There was a bug in FvwmPager that was fixed (check the main branch and not 1.1.1) where if the color was black, the logic would fall back to the color set in the fvwm colorset since black = 0 which is false. You could make the color something like #010101, which is almost black but not zero, or you could use the patch that fixed that issue with the pager.

5

I’ve gone through my decorations and other ConfigFvwm* files and replaced all instances of ‘black’ with ‘#010101’, but this does not seem to have fixed the issue. Do I need to restart fvwm by exiting entirely?
I was using ‘Fvwm Restart’ from the menu.
(also, is there anything I need to change here to make the transparency into composited – ie, “real” – transparency, rather than a fake one?

6

Then the issue you are seeing isn’t due to the minor bug with using black colors. I would have to check your configuration more closely, but things have changed so read the manual page.

Fvwm doesn’t support real transparency, you should use a compositor if you want real transparency. Fvwm only supports a fake transparency, that works in some situations.

7

Note, this is not something FvwmPager supports, that is probably the problem. FvwmPager only supports single color names with the Fore option, so Fore midnightblue will work. I’m unsure where you got this from, but this is not listed in the manual page anywhere.

Note that modules are their own thing. They each implement their own configurations in their own way. You cannot use fvwm configurations in a module, you have to use only the ones the module supports, which is in the module’s manual page.

8

Here are some examples of transparent pagers I was testing. Note each has their own issues, but might give you a starting point to get behavior you may want. The transparent effects are only just taking screenshots of the desktop then using that as the pixmap. This has various issues, and a real compositor like picom will give you much better results.

# Transparency
Colorset 25 Plain, fg black, bg DarkSlateGrey, Transparent
Colorset 26 Plain, fg black, bg DarkSlateGrey, Alpha 5, Transparent
Colorset 27 Plain, fg black, bg MidnightBlue, hi LightSkyBlue, sh DeekSkyBlue, Transparent
Colorset 28 Plain, fg black, bg average, bgTint red 85, hi PaleVioletRed, sh DarkRed, Alpha 75, Transparent

Style TP8 ParentalRelativity
DestroyModuleConfig TP8: *
*TP8: MonitorLabels
*TP8: Colorset 25
*TP8: HilightColorset 26
*TP8: WindowColorsets 27 28
*TP8: LabelPixmap true
*TP8: Window3DBorders
*TP8: WindowBorderWidth 3

# RootTransparency
Colorset 29 fg rgb:55/11/55, bg average, \
  Tint white 40, bgTint white 40, RootTransparent

#Style TP9 ParentalRelativity
DestroyModuleConfig TP9: *
*TP9: MonitorLabels
*TP9: Colorset * 29
*TP9: HilightColorset * 29

You run them with something like FvwmPager TP9 0 3

9

I’ve modified the FvwmPager section in the modules file to read the following:

#------------------ FvwmPager:  Swallowed by ButtonBar
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Style "FvwmPagerPager" NoTitle, NoHandles, Sticky, WindowListSkip, CirculateSkip

DestroyModuleConfig FvwmPagerPager: *
*FvwmPagerPager: UseSkipList
*FvwmPagerPager: Colorset * 20
*FvwmPagerPager: HighlightColorset * 26
#*FvwmPagerPager: Fore midnightblue
*FvwmPagerPager: Font "xft:monospace:Bold:pixelsize=10;-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
#*FvwmPagerPager: Hilight lightgrey
*FvwmPagerPager: MiniIcons
*FvwmPagerPager: Balloons
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonColorset * 3
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColorsets 4 4
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonFont "xft:monospace:Medium:pixelsize=10;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
*FvwmPagerPager: Geometry 319x69+5000+5000
#WIN 1
#*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white Blue4
#FVWM 1
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white SlateBlue
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 0 Main
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 1 Internet
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 2 Games
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 3 Work
*FvwmPagerPager: SmallFont "xft:sans-serif:Medium:pixelsize=8;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

The ‘HighlightColorset * 26’ is exactly the Colorset 26 you posted in your second code block.
The internal borders in the swallowed Pager are now dark blue, but otherwise the Highlight color is still pale gray (and not RootTransparent or any other transparency), and the balloons still don’t work.
So I’m clearly still doing something wrong here :frowning:

10

Where in the manual page or in my example was the option HighlightColorset used. Pay a little bit closer attention to details. The only valid options are the options listed in the FvwmPager manual page.

11

arrgh, sorry. Misspelled. It now reads:

#------------------ FvwmPager:  Swallowed by ButtonBar
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Style "FvwmPagerPager" NoTitle, NoHandles, Sticky, WindowListSkip, CirculateSkip

DestroyModuleConfig FvwmPagerPager: *
*FvwmPagerPager: UseSkipList
*FvwmPagerPager: Colorset * 2
*FvwmPagerPager: HilightColorset * 5
#*FvwmPagerPager: Fore midnightblue
*FvwmPagerPager: Font "xft:monospace:Bold:pixelsize=10;-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
#*FvwmPagerPager: Hilight lightgrey
*FvwmPagerPager: MiniIcons
*FvwmPagerPager: Balloons
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonColorset * 3
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColorsets 4 4
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonFont "xft:monospace:Medium:pixelsize=10;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
*FvwmPagerPager: Geometry 319x69+5000+5000
#WIN 1
#*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white Blue4
#FVWM 1
#*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColors white grey51 white SlateBlue
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 0 Main
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 1 Internet
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 2 Games
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 3 Work
*FvwmPagerPager: SmallFont "xft:sans-serif:Medium:pixelsize=8;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

And now this pager won’t start. I just see an empty box inside ButtonBar. Colorsets 2 and 5 are unchanged from my previous post.

Sorry I’m struggling so much with this. I wrote these configs over a decade ago :frowning_face:

BTW: since I have picom running, is there a way to have real transparency here? I’ve seen a few posts on the forum that suggest it (like this one: Picom - compositor for Xorg), but I don’t know what I’d need to do with my config here to use it.

12

Fvwm requires that you take the time to read documentation and figure things out. I can still see you using options that no longer exist, all options are documented in the manual page, as it documents the options and how to use them.

You are missing a closing " in your font definitions. You also start the pager at the location 5000x5000 which starts the pager offscreen for me. If you want the pager in the bottom right corner use: Geometry 319x69-0-0

Again, you need to take the time to read over the options one by one, understand what they do and adjust things to your use.

13

I’ve fixed the couple options I could find that were deprecated, and added the " to the font definition. This pager is supposed to be swallowed by ButtonBar; I had thought that was to spawn it first offscreen, then swallow it into ButtonBar once the latter had spawned.

This is how the Style now reads (I’ve removed options I’ve commented out):

#------------------ FvwmPager:  Swallowed by ButtonBar
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Style "FvwmPagerPager" !Title, !Handles, Sticky, WindowListSkip, CirculateSkip

DestroyModuleConfig FvwmPagerPager: *
*FvwmPagerPager: UseSkipList
*FvwmPagerPager: Colorset * 20
*FvwmPagerPager: HilightColorset * 26
*FvwmPagerPager: Font "xft:monospace:Bold:pixelsize=10;-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
*FvwmPagerPager: MiniIcons
*FvwmPagerPager: Balloons
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonColorset * 3
*FvwmPagerPager: WindowColorsets 4 4
*FvwmPagerPager: BalloonFont "xft:monospace:Medium:pixelsize=10;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
*FvwmPagerPager: Geometry 319x69+0+0
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 0 Main
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 1 Internet
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 2 Games
*FvwmPagerPager: Label 3 Work
*FvwmPagerPager: SmallFont "xft:sans-serif:Medium:pixelsize=8;-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

In my decorations file, the colorsets 20 and 26 are as follows:

Colorset 20 RootTransparent, fg #0afbff, bg average, Tint #010101 20, bgTint #010101 20
Colorset 26 Plain, fg #010101, bg DarkSlateGrey, Alpha 5, Transparent

The problem (at least this last go 'round) was in the colorset definitions for 2 and 5. Pager now appears swallowed inside ButtonBar like it should be, but now the Hilight color is this weird dark green I don’t want. I assume that’s the DarkSlateGrey, so I’ll see if I can change that.

Thanks for your patience.

Update:
I’ve set my colorset definitions as follows:

Colorset 20 RootTransparent, fg #0afbff, bg average, Tint #010101 20, bgTint #010101 20
Colorset 26 Plain, fg #0afbff, bg #010101, Alpha 5, Transparent
Colorset 29 fg rgb:55/11/55, bg average, Tint white 40, bgTint white 40, RootTransparent

20 is mine, but 26 and 29 are yours (changing only the fg and bg definitions for 26). If I use HilightColorset 26 on this Pager style, it loads normally. If I use HilightColorset 29, it doesn’t. I can’t seem to find the page explaining all the options for how colorsets work, but from your comment (Various issues with decorations - #8 by somiaj), it seems like it should work.

14

You need to read Picom’s documentation for that. IS all done from picom’s side of things.

15

I have picom’s composited transparency working for window decorations – ie, they show windows underneath them, slightly blurred as they’re supposed to be – but on menus there’s no composited transparency

Is there a setting for the menu to use real transparency through picom like there is for window decorations? Also, for the Translucent setting, what color(set) does it use for the blended color? Mine seems to be using light grey. My menu is styled with the following:

MenuStyle * fvwm
MenuStyle * font "xft:TeX Gyre Heros:size=12"
MenuStyle * Translucent 10, ActiveFore, Background #010101
MenuStyle * MenuColorset 9, PopupOffset 0 100, AnimationOn
MenuStyle * Greyed grey80  
MenuStyle * VerticalItemSpacing 2 4, VerticalTitleSpacing 2 4

Colorset 9 is:

Colorset 9 RootTransparent, fg #0afbff, bg average, Tint #091251 40, Translucent 20, ParentRelative

Which is the same colorset I use for title bars on the active window.

Is there some way to get the menus to use the same composited transparency the window decorations use?