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Hack 33. Add Depth to Your Desktop
Drop shadows add a dimension of depth to everywindow and pop up on your desktop. The 3D effect is truly
mesmerizing.A composite manager program
called xcompmgr
is available that taps into some of the new features of the Xorg X
Window System to create attractive drop shadows for windows, pop ups,
menus, and the like. It also gives you the option to make your
windows and menus fade in and out instead of the normal behavior of
appearing and disappearing instantly.You can use xcompmgr only if you use the Xorg
fork of the
XFree86 project. You cannot use this with any version of XFree86. And
you can use it only if you have a recent version
of Xorg. Check which X server and version you're
using with the following command:
# X -versionIf you don't see 6.8.0 or higher as the version,
X Window System Version 6.8.0
this hack is not for you.
4.13.1. Get the Composite Manager
A composite manager taps into the new Xorg features that allow X11 to
blend various on-screen elements in ways XFree86 cannot. For example,
it allows you to make a window partially transparent by blending the
background into the application foreground. You can find some
programs that appear to give you this feature, such as X terminals
that look partially transparent. But they aren't
tapping into the features of Xorg; they are essentially
"faking it" with some clever
graphics tricks. Faking it might look good, but the difference is
speed. The Xorg composite features exist as part of the X11 engine,
so the effects are built-in and render much faster.You'll need to install the
xcompmgr program to take advantage of these
features. You probably won't find this program as a
normal package in the standard package repositories for your Linux
distribution, because it is experimental and can still be very quirky
and unstable at this point. A Google search turned up a number of RPM
packages for xcompmgr at http://rpm.pbone.net.If this or any other site doesn't have a ready-made
package that installs cleanly on your Linux distribution, you will
have to compile it yourself. Because this is experimental code
there's no guarantee it will compile on your system.
You need to connect to a CVS server to download the source code. So,
log in as root, change to a directory where you like to keep local
source code, such as /usr/local/src, and run the
following commands (you do not need a password, so just press Enter
when prompted for one):
# cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/xorg login
CVS password: (press Enter)
# cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@pdx.freedesktop.org:/cvs/xapps co xcompmgr
# cd xcompmgr
# sh autogen.sh
# ./configure
# make
# make install
4.13.2. Start Your Desktop or Window Manager
The xcompmgr program
doesn't play
well with every desktop or window manager. In my experience, it does
not work well with Metacity, the default window manager for GNOME.
Metacity is supposed to have some of the
xcompmgr capabilities already built-in, but I
have not been able to tap into them. Regardless, you
can't invoke xcompmgr until you
have started your favorite desktop or window manager, so do that now.The manpage for xcompmgr explains the various
tricks you can do with the program. However, the following
combination of command-line switches should please nearly everyone.
Open an X terminal and type this command:
$ xcompmgr -cCfF -l 0 -t 0 -r 5 -o .6 &If everything works the way it should, the screen should go mostly
blank for a moment, after which any open windows will reappear with
drop shadows. You should also notice that things such as menus have
drop shadows and fade in and out. See Figure 4-3
for an example of this effect.
Figure 4-3. Firefox and menu with shadows
-l 0 and -t
0 switches tell xcompmgr that
pixels (no shadow at all) should appear to the left of the window
(-l 0), and no shadow pixels
should appear above the top of the window (-t
0). This means you will see drop shadows only to
the right of and beneath the windows, as though the light source is
up and to the left. Normally, xcompmgr creates a
shadow around the entire window. This effect isn't
too bad, but because many other things that appear on-screen (such as
your mouse pointer) have shadows to the right and below, this
combination makes the simulated light source consistent.The -r 5 and
-o .6 switches tell
xcompmgr to give the shadows a radius of 5 and
an opacity of 0.6, which makes the shadows somewhat subtle.Finally, let's pick apart the combination
-cCfF. The c tells
xcompmgr to include shadows and translucency;
the C tells xcompmgr to try
to avoid creating shadows for things such as launch panels. The
combination fF tells xcompmgr
to fade just about everything in and out whenever windows, menus, or
other objects change (maximize, minimize, etc.).
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