On 2010-03-10 10:15-0800 David MacMahon wrote: > I'm not really sure how to interpret alpha for the background of a GUI > window. What's behind the background to see through too? For graphics files > (e.g. .png or .svg) they might be overlaid on something else so background > transparency there is more intuitive. > > Perhaps if the background is non-opaque, GUIs could draw an opaque > checkerboard "backbackground" (like the gimp does) before drawing the > non-opaque background? > > Or maybe the GUI widgets being rendered into have their own alpha channel and > could therefore be layered in a way that would give the background's alpha > channel an obvious meaning? In this case, the GUI widget would need to be > "cleared" before drawing the non-opaque background of a subsequent plot.
I think the best way to state this is that PLplot implements transparent backgrounds for its modern devices, but other applications have to do their part as well to allow overall background transparency. There are already some neat transparent background effects being deployed on the desktop (e.g., if you move a KDE GUI it becomes transparent so you can see underneath it) that show this is possible. Thus, for example, I assume some file viewers may already allow transparent background options of their own so that when that is combined with a transparent PLplot background you could see through to the application below. Similarly, I assume there are GUI options for GNOME and KDE to allow transparent GUI backgrounds. But I have not researched any of this yet. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
