make only a portion of a window transparent

[delfick]

how possible would it be to choose a particular section of a window (in a method similar to say how the screenshot plugin works) so that only the selected portion of the window is effected by <alt><scroll> (or whatever is set to make windows transparent)

?? :D

[SmSpillaz]

would require stencil buffering afaik, which some cards don't provide

I'm not too sure how that would work either...

ohwell :)

[delfick]

damn....

cause say you have two openoffice writer windows open with the document at fit to page zoom level.

and you want to view those two pages at once (and still be able to edit them)

either you buy a 30" monitor so you can fit them side by side
or you keep switching between the two windows
or you keep moving them back and forth
or you keep switching between transparent and not trasparent for one of them over and over again

or you can just make the grey unused side of one of the windows transparent (as in my idea) so the two pages can be side by side and you see both....

so what cards would provide stencil buffering ?

[SmSpillaz]

/me has a 24' monitor on his desktop if it helps, but only 12' on his laptop

Like I said earlier, I'm not *really* too sure what it would require, but I reminds me of this, (http://insitu.lri.fr/metisse/facades/) where you can split one window-texture up into many :)

Requires input redirection to work correctly though...

Man IR is gonna ROCK!

[Deciare]

or you can just make the grey unused side of one of the windows transparent (as in my idea) so the two pages can be side by side and you see both....
I'm not sure I follow. If you overlap one window with another, then make the overlapping region transparent, you would be able to see both documents, but how would it help you edit both documents? Isn't resizing both windows to take less space a little more straightforward?


Off topic: That Metisse demo is amazing. o.o Rearranging the UI on a whim is something that I thought would be impossible without extensive modifications to the underlying graphical toolkit's layout systems. So being able to move bits and pieces around like that... Is nothing short of astonishing. I'm not sure I'll even have a use for it, but it'd be an extremely neat trick to show off. :D

[delfick]

I'm not sure I follow. If you overlap one window with another, then make the overlapping region transparent, you would be able to see both documents, but how would it help you edit both documents? Isn't resizing both windows to take less space a little more straightforward?

on my laptop, it was killing me, having to constantly resize and move around because the stupid canvas goes in the centre of the window, rather than the side when you zoom out in openoffice....

as the screenshot shows (it's not so bad in the screenshot cause it's on my actual computer, and I can't be bothered starting up my laptop :p), the side of the window gets in the way..........

as for editing.....

hmm.....

how about, it is possible to make the window manager "ignore" a portion of a window, so that it doesn't draw it and doesn't recieve mouse events for that portion ?
(my guess is that would require input redirection if possible, atleast for ignoring the mouse part anyways...)

[delfick]

Man IR is gonna ROCK!

it certainly will :D

[Deciare]

on my laptop, it was killing me, having to constantly resize and move around because the stupid canvas goes in the centre of the window, rather than the side when you zoom out in openoffice....

as the screenshot shows (it's not so bad in the screenshot cause it's on my actual computer, and I can't be bothered starting up my laptop :p), the side of the window gets in the way..........
Oh. Yeah, that is annoying. I found an option to disable the grey border altogether, though, by switching to View->Web Layout.

how about, it is possible to make the window manager "ignore" a portion of a window, so that it doesn't draw it and doesn't recieve mouse events for that portion ?
(my guess is that would require input redirection if possible, atleast for ignoring the mouse part anyways...)
That's even trickier than the suggestions to make input pass through whole windows... At least with whole windows, you could conceivably keep the window off-screen and only show a visual copy of it where the pass-through window should be, but I'm not sure what kind of trick would be involved in making part of a window pass-through.

[delfick]

hmm, just an invisible portion would be good enough :D

(as for web layout, if only I could have used that, but the stupid pictures go all over the place, and I was checking to make sure text flow was good :D (goddamn 20 000 word report we finally finished :D))