compton + spectrwm: Transparency not working...

linuxlicious · 04-26-2016, 01:14 AM

So basically I want all inactive windows be transparent, but it doesn't seem to work in spectrwm. I tried some other WMs, e. g. LWM and it works fine there. What is going wrong there? Is there a workaround for this kind of problem? It seems to work fine for other people, so what's the deal? Any ideas?
Here's my compton.conf (generated with compton-conf):

Code:

shadow = true;
no-dnd-shadow = true;
no-dock-shadow = true;
clear-shadow = true;
shadow-radius = 4;
shadow-offset-x = -5;
shadow-offset-y = -5;
shadow-opacity = 0.6;
shadow-red = 0.0;
shadow-green = 0.0;
shadow-blue = 1.0;
shadow-exclude = [ "name = 'Notification'", "class_g = 'Conky'", "class_g ?= 'Notify-osd'", "class_g = 'Cairo-clock'" ];
shadow-ignore-shaped = false;
menu-opacity = 0.7;
inactive-opacity = 0.5;
active-opacity = 1.0;
frame-opacity = 1.0;
inactive-opacity-override = false;
alpha-step = 0.06;
inactive-dim = 0.7;
blur-kern = "3x3box";
blur-background-exclude = [ "window_type = 'dock'", "window_type = 'desktop'" ];
fading = true;
fade-in-step = 0.03;
fade-out-step = 0.03;
fade-exclude = [ ];
backend = "xrender";
mark-wmwin-focused = true;
mark-ovredir-focused = true;
detect-rounded-corners = true;
detect-client-opacity = true;
refresh-rate = 0;
vsync = "none";
dbe = false;
paint-on-overlay = true;
focus-exclude = [ "class_g = 'Cairo-clock'" ];
detect-transient = true;
detect-client-leader = true;
invert-color-include = [ ];
glx-copy-from-front = false;
glx-swap-method = "undefined";
wintypes : 
{
  tooltip : 
  {
    fade = true;
    shadow = false;
    opacity = 0.75;
    focus = true;
  };
};
fade-delta = 7;

Mitt Green · 04-26-2016, 04:42 AM

spectrwm can simply not support it. On dwm there is a patch for it.

enorbet · 04-26-2016, 08:47 PM

AFAIK all of the "outside" compositors are essentially ceased in development. Still in very active development is KWin which I use in Xfce to great effect both in appearance and function. GTK3 makes more dependency issues than there used to be but not mant KDE libs are needed in with that increase. If interested consult distro-specific guides and/or tutorials for the list.

linuxlicious · 04-27-2016, 01:40 AM

Matt - I just remembered that it worked on another laptop (which is in pieces now) and I think I may or may not have asked either here or in the Archlinux forums how to stop the bar from getting transparent, so I'm pretty sure it's not an issue with spectrwm, but I'll have to veryfy that. So given that it does on spectrwm, why doesn't it work on this laptop? They both use the same graphics chipset (intel 950 or 915) and both run a basic arch linux setup with Xorg, Spectrwm and some needed apps.

PS:I have just confirmed that compton transparency works fine in spectrwm on my other crappy lappy. So any ideas why it doesn't work on my netbook?

linuxlicious · 06-08-2016, 01:02 AM

So... any ideas what might be going wrong? I already confirmed that it works fine on the other machine. Why not on this one? what am I missing?

ondoho · 06-09-2016, 01:34 PM

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...indow_managers
there's a big fat NO for compositing for spectrwm, i.e. according to this list it doesn't even work with an external compositor.
if you were using compton on your other, defunct laptop, you surely would remember it.
maybe the transparent bar is/was fake transparency? i.e., it is not really transparent, but simply copies the underlying root window? that is quite common.

linuxlicious · 06-11-2016, 01:53 AM

Well then the setup on my other lappy most be an exeption then because I already verified that transparency works on Spectrwm on this one. I'm gonna have to take a snapshot of it so you can see that it is working on that laptop. It's not fake transparency because it disappears when compton is stopped. I remember that I was struggling to stop the bar from getting transparent but never figured that one out. I wonder if it might have something to do with spectrwm and/or compton being older versions? Maybe support for transparency has been removed since then?

PS: I can't help but think that if I can run compton on spectrwm and have windows blend in and out, then I should be able to have transparent windows on my acer netbook. Transparency seems to work fine in gtk windows though.
I was also wondering if maybe since I got spectrwm and compton from the AUR repos, maybe I installed a version with transparency compiled in?