On 13-Jan-2002 Marc Wilson wrote: > On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 11:19:36AM -0800, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: >> So, I was a E hacker way back when and saw the birth of Eterm. I even used >> to >> work with its author (ick). > > You have my condolences. :) Eterm... bleah. So much required, for so > little gain. >
yeah ...... >> When Eterm was created it was realized that there is NO way to find out what >> the root looks like. > > Seriously? That surprises me, since obviously screen grabber applications > can deal with the idea. Or do they go directly to the hardware display of > the image? I freely admit that I know pretty much nothing about > programming under X. > You can ask for the root, but you are then responsible for many other things, the code is not as happy. >> So they made an app which sets an Atom that others apps (liek Eterm) can >> query. > > The image is stored in the atom? Seems memory intensive. Or is there just > a pointer to it? > Atom's hold integer indexes into the X server. You store the Pixmap ID and then ask for it. >> Once Eterm's psuedo transparency became popular other people used the >> idea. So this is how xchat and other apps achieve the same thing. Note >> that same apps (xv) do not set this Atom which is why Eterm does not work >> with xv. > > Hm, implying that either: > > (1) all other root-setting applications are broken > - or - > (2) what Eterm/Esetroot do is non-standard > > Which is it? ^_^ > Eterm is non standard, the programs that do not support the ROOT_ID atom are all programs written before 1996. Some of them even worked under X11R5 (-: The standards were written before many of us began using X and have not changed. The id is however standard among GNOME, E, other wms, and I think even good parts of KDE. >> aterm codes a fall back. If the Atom is not set, it sets its background >> to ParentRelative which mimics the root window. This however does not >> work as well. > > So there is a way to find out the root bitmap, then? :) > sorta. You say "draw my background as if I were my parent". You get no control or access. >> The proper solution is for bsetroot to properly set the Atoms that the >> transparent apps want. > > What about bitmaps in general? We have bsetbg, which requires one of > display/Esetroot/xsri/xv, and it sounds like only Esetroot does things in > the right way. > I have not tried display recently, it may have been updated.
