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boolean.is.null

Member

Registered: 2016-11-08

Posts: 5

Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

I noticed that my xfce4-terminal (0.8.0) recently stopped having a transparent background. In the settings it reports that my Window Manager doesn't support compositing. (http://i.imgur.com/eMJPptX.png)

However, it worked fine until a while ago. I'm using LightDM and i3wm. Transparent background with other terminal emulators work fine (e.g. Eterm).

Has the support for transparent backgrounds been dropped or have the dependencies changed?

Debian Stretch;
# uname -a
Linux host 4.7.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.7.8-1 (2016-10-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

Hello and welcome.

However, it worked fine until a while ago.

How far back and which version did it work? xfce4-terminal has recently been ported to gtk3/vte3 and there have been alot of changes. My understanding is that it needs a compositor to be able to do background transparency. I'm not that familiar with i3wm, does it include or run with a compositor?

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boolean.is.null

Member

Registered: 2016-11-08

Posts: 5

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

Hello and welcome.

However, it worked fine until a while ago.

How far back and which version did it work? xfce4-terminal has recently been ported to gtk3/vte3 and there have been alot of changes. My understanding is that it needs a compositor to be able to do background transparency. I'm not that familiar with i3wm, does it include or run with a compositor?

Hi!

Not that long ago.. I'd say two weeks.

I'm afraid I didn't pay attention when exactly it happened, but I'm assuming it has to do with the last update to version 0.8.0-1.

Does it need the compositor since a recent update, or for longer now? I do have to admit that I don't know that either..

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

Looks like this commit for 0.8.0.

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boolean.is.null

Member

Registered: 2016-11-08

Posts: 5

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

"Show warning and disable Opacity control in Preferences if WM does not support compositing"

Interesting.. so that means that I will not be able to use opacity in backgrounds of xfce4-terminals from now on with i3wm, right?

Do you have any idea why they added that? I mean, it worked perfectly fine before..

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

I think this might be related to the vte3 upgrade. Does the same transparency issue exist with gnome-terminal?
Perhaps its best to ask the developer via a bug report.

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boolean.is.null

Member

Registered: 2016-11-08

Posts: 5

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

I just installed gnome-terminal to check, but I can't find the setting to define the background transparency anywhere. To check this with another terminal emulator I installed terminator, where the transparent background works fine again.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

Looks like terminator is still based on gtk2/vte2 whereas gnome-terminal is based on gtk3/vte3. I thought that gnome-terminal supported transparency, but it looks like the feature was removed and not worked back in as was done in xfce4-terminal.

It looks like if you want transparency in a gtk3/vte3 terminal you're going to need to have a compositor running or use something like devilspie (but that will change the transparency on the whole window - controls and all). Here is a devilspie ds file you could use:

(if
  (matches (window_class) "Xfce4-terminal")
  (opacity 50)
)

...adjust opacity level to suit.

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boolean.is.null

Member

Registered: 2016-11-08

Posts: 5

Re: Transparent background not working anymore in xfce4-terminal

That's weird.. welp.. I guess that's clear now..

thank you very much for your help ToZ!