Fyi: The transparency patch indeed did appear in Ubuntu Vivid. On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 12:48 PM, Egmont Koblinger <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Zerothly, there is no need for a patch; gnome-terminal supports > > transparency just fine. > > It's not the same. With the given patch, you get a translucent > background, but all other colors remain opaque. With a WM/compositing > approach even the foreground colors, non-default background colors, > and the UI chrome (menubar, tabs, WM title bar) become transparent. > It's really not the same user experience. Especially with the > foreground text becoming translucent, the result is in my opinion less > usable than with the explicit transparency patch. > > > Firstly, this patch will *never* be accepted upstream > > Secondly, it relies on an undocumented feature of vte > > Why not at least document the vte feature and committing to keeping > that, for the benefit of other vte-based apps? > > > Thirdly, the actual patch presented here has several defects, chiefly > > the problem that it always forces an ARGB visual even when no > > transparency is in use. This may negatively impact performance and > > memory use. > > Someone somewhere (can't remember who and where, sorry) pointed out > that quite a few other apps already always force ARGB without > problems. As far as I remember, they pointed out that ARGB used to > have problems but it's not the case anymore. Yet, if it's still an > issue, the patch should be further improved to handle this. > > I myself have used g-t with this patch for about half a year now, and > F20/Rawhide also ships this. I haven't found any reports yet that are > likely connected to transparency. > > What are the other defects? > > > Fourthly, the patch adds user-visible strings, but does not contain > > their translation > > Isn't it one more reason for accepting the feature mainstream (maybe > behind a disabled-by-default configure flag)? Translations would > appear at almost zero cost. > > > Finally, there are many other terminal emulators that do support > > transparency (e.g., KDE's konsole); so if they want transparency, the > > user can simply choose to use one of them instead of gnome-terminal. > > I have recently put tons of effort in improving gnome-terminal, > probably most significantly the rewrap-on-resize feature makes it > significantly better for me than most other terminals. I'd hate to > tell our users "go use another terminal", that's not why I put so much > work in it. I'd prefer my work to reach as many users as possible, > even those who insist on transparency. > > > as an addendum: While the OP claims that the patch is already more > > widely used than just its originator (Fedora) > > I'm not sure about Ubuntu's branches and stuff, but looking at > https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/gnome-terminal/ubuntu and > https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/ubuntu/gnome3-staging > suggests to me that probably the patch is going to be included in > Vivid. > > > In conclusion, it is my opinion that Debian should *not* add this patch > > to its gnome-terminal package. > > I don't think I have a conclusion here :) I think the best would be > if mainstream g-t accepted this feature, I can't see why ChPe is so > resistant, but he made it clear that the feature won't become > mainstream. I'm not sure if all major distros shipping the patch and > pushing for adoption could make him change his mind. Given this > situation, Debian should listen to its users, understand the pros/cons > of applying this patch and make whatever seems to be the best > decision. > > cheers, > egmont >
