Latest Fedora Xorg and the compositor

[Nikolas Arend]

Danny Milosavljevic wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Am Dienstag, den 05.10.2004, 21:31 +0200 schrieb Nikolas Arend:
>  
>
>>Thanks for getting back,
>>
>>although my main question was not about speed, I will check the hardware 
>>acceleration of my card (ATI Radeon).
>>I understand from your mail that the compositor is not actually 
>>configurable itself but only sort of a link between X and the desktop/
>>window manager in the sense of "composing" what features X is providing. 
>>So to change the look'n'feel of the desktop (transparencies,
>>shadows, support for accessibility applications, etc) I would have to 
>>modify the X server settings, is that correct? Or do the applications
>>    
>>
>
>I'm barging in, but here is what I think it is like ;)
>
>server settings: only to turn it on or off completely.
>
>  
>
>>must
>>
>> make use of and support the new xorg features natively (and if they 
>>don't I won't see those)?
>>    
>>
>
>yes.
>There are two ways afaik,
>1) there is a new RGBA pixel model that apps can use and set
>red,green,blue and alpha transparency per pixel
>2) there is a new property to be set on windows to set their overall
>transparency, kinda as a shortcut
>
>there is an app called "transset" that makes use of 2), but if you want
>more sophisticated alpha blending (i.e. non-uniform over the surface of
>the window), the app needs to paint it.
>
>Hope that helps
>  
>
Yes indeed, I think I'm beginning to understand what the compositor is 
and what it's not. So I guess it's gonna
take a while until a reasonable amount of apps will make full use of the 
new features. Until then I'll hopefully
have my graphics cards accelerated ;-)

Thanks,  Nick