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X GUI

X-Server with Alpha Transparency 137

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-it-be-nice dept.
An anonymous reader pointed us to a Java X Server that has hacked together alpha channel transparency. Its not XF86, but its nifty. It demos (worthless but pretty) transparent windows, bizarre but pretty transparent widgets, but also the extremely wonderful and essential anti-aliased fonts that X11 continues to lack.
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X-Server with Alpha Transparency More

X-Server with Alpha Transparency

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  • I need that! Does anyone know when/where/how I can get an X-Server with anti aliased fonts? Small font sizes in netscape are almost impossible to read. :(
  • I saw this a couple of days ago... Apparently the WeirdX programmer got the idea from Berlin [berlin-consortium.org].

    Whether or not Berlin ever becomes the replacement windowing system, it's pretty cool that MacOS X and now X11 are getting neat toys from them. What'll they come up with next, I wonder?

  • Will xf86 have this kind of alpha transperancy. Maybe some of this kode can be used in some way.
  • Does this mean I can do Transparent work, in a Transparent IDE?
    ON the Plus side. I can surf for transparent Porn at work and the boss will never catch me.

  • Useless (Score:1)

    by Tsk ( 2863 )
    IMO , that kind of "feature" is useless to get some work done. It should be implemanted on the application level - ie only a few apps need ta have alpha channel things like the Gimp or some games.
    The only people really interested are Hardware vendors, one more occasion to upgrade the CPU and/or the Graphic card .....
  • I'm just glad there's a good X-server that runs on win32... is this prog free, or do you have to pay for it?

  • Does this use some sort of backing-store, or does uncovering a bunch of semi-transparent windows cause expose events for every window? If the latter, it would seem like it would be very flashy when uncovering windows.

    On another note, an X server written in Java sounds really gross and slow. What next -- Perl? (although that does sound kind of cool in a hackish sort of way)


    --

  • J-J-J-JCraft. . . Hmmm Sounds familiar.

    Anyway, This does look pretty cool, but I think the translucent images would drive me nuts over long hours. It's bad enough having to focus on sharp images much less translucent ones. If I'm going to have to sit in front of a monitor for 18+ hours a day getting K-rays shot at my eyes, I'd at least like to see what I'm looking at from a human perspecive.

    This I beleive is what my dog sees when he looks at my monitor.

  • Berlin, Great band. Terri Nunn is quite the little hottie, Impressive... Most impressive.

  • I need that! Does anyone know when/where/how I can get an X-Server with anti aliased fonts? Small font sizes in netscape are almost impossible to read. :(

    IIRC Mozilla will have (has?) anti aliased fonts regardless of what X-server you're using.

  • Wrongo!

    Since when was the ability to antialias fonts useless.
    Why is being able to see the code in the background of your running app useless?

  • I glad to see this, Finally there is a decent GPL'd X-Server becoming available that will run under Windows.

    This will allow me to start serving X-Apps from my Linux servers to the Windows users on the network, and I can start getting them migrated to Linux apps without having to change there setup...

    Granted, I would do this with VNC, but that would not provide me with seemless integration with the windows environment, ie, the Multi-window mode where each X-App has it's own window, just like local Window apps...

  • WiredX (Score:3)

    by BigEd ( 6405 ) <togdon@thanatoid.net> on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @09:34AM (#1037647) Homepage
    This is apparently the product of an ASP. From their About [wiredx.net] page:

    WiredX.net is an ASP which provides pure JavaTM X Window System servers. WiredX and WiredX-Lite enable access to Unix applications on your LAN from your non-Unix desktops (Windows 95/98/NT/2000) via web browsers(IE, Netscape and Mozilla). WiredX.net also provides free downloading services of restricted WiredX and WiredX-Lite to WiredX.net members.

    According to the about page the service is free to all WiredX members, and membership is free... So a cool X-Server with Alpha transparency that lets you access a nix machine from the web.

    The TOS (for those interested) are here [wiredx.net].

  • (though you'd probably want to have Java 2 or later for this). I wrote myself a pretty nifty charting program with anti-aliased fonts and lines in Java in about 5 hours the other day. (First thing I've done using the Java2D libraries too). I've extended it a bit since then though.

    Having a bit of fun doing some comparisons between Java and C at the moment, and using my own charting program to show this, heh. (perhaps the most surprising result, to me anyway, is that GCC 2.95.2 kinda beats Microsoft's Visual C in the more complex tests, and MSVC is supposed to be really hot too...)

  • Since it's next to impossible to find a free (never mind open source) X-server for windows, I jumped at the chance to try WierdX! Although you can make blandishments about java being slow, it's quite comparable to Xvnc, and I find it more elegent overall. I think it's a great use of Java.

    Cheers,
    -OT

  • Re:Impressive... Most impressive. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I might point out that Win2000 also has transparency. Look at the shadows of the cursors, or do a drag and drop of files in file explorer (the files have this cool fade effect).

  • Great (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So... one of the problems with X is that it's slow and sluggish...so...lets write a new X server in Java...that should make it slow and sluggish squared.

    Thank you.
  • one thing you should consider is using true type fonts (works flawlessly under X). verdana ttf, renders nicely even in the tiniest of sizes. perfect for browsing the web with netscape. also the option "use my default fonts" in netscape makes thing better when browsing sites that use rediculusly small font sizes. (q3arena.com for one)

    /largo
  • MacOS X didn't get transparency from Berlin, they got it from PDF.

  • It's a pretty cool idea to have a cross-platform X server written in Java... but last time I tried WeirdX it was unusably slow, even on a P3 500 w/ 64 MB of RAM.

    Hope they worked also on that front. I know Java is not the best language when talking about GUI applications (OK, programming with Swing is cool, but it's kinda slow, even with JDK 1.3), but with jEdit at least I can get some work done.


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • ...or did the people who wrote that page constantly switch between calling it WeirdX and WiredX?

    Strange...
  • You might try the XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO [tucows.com] for some help with the Netscape fonts. Although not perfect, it made quite a difference for me.
  • looks more like its grabbing each individual window, toning down the opacity and then displaying it. notice on the gimp screenshots how some parts of each window are a bit more opaque than others (such as the menus and labels and buttons, etc). this is because that is another window over a window and the two translucent windows over each other are causing those parts to be more opaque than each other. so, all in all, it looks like nothing more than a crazy hack. i dont think i would like having every window translucent, anyway.
    --
    Joshua Deere (dphase@locnet.net)
    UNIX Systems Administrator, LOCNET Internet Services
  • It seems to be the highlight feature of modern GUI's. Win2k, WinMe, X, and OS X can all do it. I wouldn't be surprised of QNX and BeOS can on the ball to implement the virtually useless "wow" feature.

    -Jon

  • Transparent windows aren't useless (Score:3)

    by Dungeon Dweller ( 134014 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @09:53AM (#1037659)
    You can look through a window that you are typing in and see another window. I actually find that useful. Try looking at spec file while typing the implementation! It's great! If you have to implement more than one header/package body, you can stack each implementation over it's own spec! That way, you can see each spec and implementation out at once.

    NOTE: This requires a good deal of "human multitasking" capability on the part of the user, and pretty darn good eyesight.
  • Doesent enlightenment do something like this?
  • there's a window manager written in perl, it's called perlwm.
    -motardo
  • or use larger fonts, my friend, or use larger fonts. :)

  • anti-aliased fonts (Score:3)

    by option8 ( 16509 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @09:56AM (#1037663) Homepage
    the anti aliased fonts seem only to appear in the version that is running on the Mac, and seems to me to be a result of the system-level font smoothing in the MacOS, not the implementation of X.

    correct me if i'm mistaken, but, if i'm right, the lead on this story is a little misleading.
  • They seem to be two different products. WierdX is the unsupported GPL one and WiredX seems to be more officially supported.
  • No, enlightenemtn does not do any type of translucency at the moment. however, EFM does have translucent menus. and to achieve this it is making use of backing stores inside the X server. It is grabbing the data under the menu (iirc, menus arent parented), then imlib2 renders the menu image over that image. if the menu image has an alpha channel, you will be able to peek through. imlib2 allows for translucency since it renders things in RGBA format (A for alpha, of course).
    --
    Joshua Deere (dphase@locnet.net)
    UNIX Systems Administrator, LOCNET Internet Services
  • yes, but a window manager and an actually X server are two completely different animals. I really dont see how it would be possible to create an actual X server with perl.

    a window manager is merely managing the windows, the X server is actually handling the display, the color mapping, etc.
    --
    Joshua Deere (dphase@locnet.net)
    UNIX Systems Administrator, LOCNET Internet Services

  • Re:Useless (Score:5)

    by Zagadka ( 6641 ) <{moc.anihcamonex} {ta} {akdagaz}> on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @09:59AM (#1037667) Homepage
    IMO , that kind of "feature" is useless to get some work done. It should be implemanted on the application level - ie only a few apps need ta have alpha channel things like the Gimp or some games. The only people really interested are Hardware vendors, one more occasion to upgrade the CPU and/or the Graphic card .....

    Actually, many GUI applications could potentially make use of this. Think anti-aliased text, or PNG's that actually work correctly in web-browsers. You say that applications that need it should be the ones to implement it. Well what about other features of the windowing system, like line drawing? By having this in the windowing system, there's one piece of code to debug, optimize, and make hardware specific versions of. If each application has to support alpha-transparency on its own, then we'll never get to make use of hardware-based alpha-composition. Do you really want to see the day when GIMP runs better on Win32 than on Linux?

    And your performance claims make no sense. Just adding alpha transparency to the windowing system doesn't mean every widget would have to use it. Widgets that don't need it wouldn't use it, or would have it as an option. There wouldn't be any significant performance degradation for widgets that don't use it. Widgets that do need it can make use of it, and less developers will need to reinvent the wheel by writing their own alpha-composition code.

  • No, they don't switch between calling it WierdX and WiredX. WierdX and WiredX are two completely seperate programs. You will notice that WierdX is based on WiredX Lite, and is GPL'd. WierdX also has a multi-window mode, that WiredX apparently does not have. To get WiredX you have to sign up with the WiredX ASP service (which is currently free) while you can just download WierdX.

    WierdX is a free, GPL'd, Multi-Windowed X-Server that will run on many platforms, including MicroSoft Windows. It is the only Multi-window capable X-Server that is GPL'd, or even free that I know of that runs under Windows.

  • was it me, or were there screenshots on wiredx.net of various window managers running inside of netscape..

    sounds like what microsoft failed miserably at with ie4.

    putting the entire desktop inside a web page..


    ---
    $ su
    who are you?
    $ whoami
    whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.

  • Re:Easy solution (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Doesn't work when pages have specified fonts in pixel or point sizes. which a lot of pages have.

    The offending pages are usually developed in Windows which assumes that screen=96dpi.

    Therefore when veiwed on a Mac (OS assumes screen=72dpi) or X-windows (assumes 75dpi, usually) the text can be unreadable---and changing the "default font size" in netscape doesn't help, as the page's styles override the default.

    You could set Netscape to override all pages' settings, but it messes up layout on some pages, and makes well-designed web pages go bland.

    Note to Web designers: PLEASE use relative sizes ("small", "medium" etc on style sheets, or <FONT SIZE={+|-}...>) as it's the only option that works properly on all platforms. (Linux gets jaggies with percentage-specified or pixel-sized fonts, Mac and Linux get unreadable with point-sized fonts.)

    You can format your pages in CSS using Ems as the unit of measurement, so that the layout remains consistent with your font size. Which is correct from the typographical point of view.

    Fuck karma. I'm anonymous, fool.

  • I recently upgraded my system from Win/98 to Win/2000. It's a Celeron 433 with 128 meg (although, I'm not sure what the memory has to do with transparency). The system seems much snappier than it was before. As for the transparency effect, it's extremely smooth, even on a large transparency (like moving a lot of files).

    Now, I'm also running a TNT graphics card. Perhaps you need a decent graphics card to get smooth performance of transparency? (that doesn't seem unreasonable...)


    --

  • actually, if you took the time to visit the site before posting your smut, you would see that this X server written in Java is running on both Windows 98 and Mac.

    If X (do you even know what X is?), Java, and several operating systems are offtopic on slashdot, that eliminates a great deal of content.

    Besides, who are you to decide what is on and off topic? You don't even post with your real name!
    ---
    $ su
    who are you?
    $ whoami
    whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.

  • Re:XF86 (Score:4)

    by dphase ( 31934 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @10:12AM (#1037673)
    Right now the only way to achieve something like this in X is through a hack. The Java X Server is merely a hack. Yes, things like EFM, Eterm, and the like are able to do stunning effects such as this, but in the end, it is actually faked. Until someone writes a protocol for X to allow this, we aren't going to see it. And writing an extension for alpha rendering is MUCH easier said then done.

    Yes, there are a few projects going on to do this, and there have been a few projects going on for _years_ now to add this to X. Don't get your hopes up, because you aren't going to see true translucency/alpha rendering on X anytime soon.
    --
    Joshua Deere (dphase@locnet.net)
    UNIX Systems Administrator, LOCNET Internet Services

  • Since W2K seems to support transparency, has anyone seen a transparent-window hack that makes all the windows transparent?


    --

  • From what it looks like, the alpha channel was controlled by an xresource or some property on an ap by app basis. But they don't tell if they actually made an extension to the X protocal to implement this or if it's just a server side thing. And if it is an actual laid out protocal extension.....who's the first to make XF86 4.0 module to implement it!?

  • Transparent windows (Score:3)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @10:16AM (#1037676) Homepage
    Heck, X10 (the version before X11, not the home automation system) had transparent windows.

    Mind, I think the usage of the term is somewhat different. (IIRC, you couldn't draw anything on a transparent window, it was just useful for intercepting events. Gosh it's been a long time since I did X10 programming...)
  • Or get larger eyes.

  • WeirdX vs. WiredX (Score:4)

    by Rhys Dyfrgi ( 64793 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @10:25AM (#1037678)
    WeirdX and WiredX are different things. WiredX comes in two versions, WiredX and WiredX-Lite, which are described [wiredx.net] on WiredX's web site [wiredx.net]. WiredX.net was created by JCraft [jcraft.com], who also created WeirdX, the GPL derivation of the Java X server.


    WeirdX is the one with the transparency hack. WiredX does NOT have this.
    ---

  • There's a free (as in beer) X server for windows called MI/X (or was it M/IX?). I used to use it when I used to use Windows and it worked well enough to get work done. A search on Google will probably turn it it.

    This Java X server looks like the development on it is a bit more active, though.
  • It's a Celeron 433 with 128 meg...

    Never heard of that. Sounds nice tough.

    Mine sounds similar XT 4.77Mhz 128 MB (Hard Drive that is). Just got the HDD, did me an upgrade.
    Spins like a wirlwind it does.
  • Keith Packard has a proposal explaining what he's working on, and apparently he's basically trying to fix everything. But Alpha layers are the top thing on his list, I think. And KP is one of the top X guys according to Jim Gettys.
  • Umm, I thought this might happen...

    Even though the word "weird" was mentioned God-knows how many times in the article, people will insist on spelling it "wierd". You're not the only offender, but everyone out there please GET IT RIGHT!!! Surely you're not all stupid, surely you can spell one little word. But post after post, page after page, channel after chanel no-one on the internet can spell the word "weird" correctly. Godammit!

    This is not a troll really. I just get frustrated...

  • Re:anti-aliased fonts (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You're right. Becuase this is written in Java, it will use the system font rendering exposed through the JVM. So, that still means no anti-aliasing on Linux...
  • AFAIK MI/X is X11R5, not X11R6, so it won't get you far.
  • Free X... How about XFree? Of course that was pretty hard to figure out... ;) See http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/xfree/ [cygnus.com].

  • From the site:


    This screenshot is brought to us by Tarun Reddy. Thanks!! He wrote us,

    After jarring the class files on a Linux box and moving them over to my mac I was able to run WeirdX!!!
    Here is a screenshot to prove it...
    .........
    All of the fonts displayed are anti-aliased! Nice job!


    So does this mean that WiredX/WeirdX will allow me to access X apps on my Mac?


    That would so totally rock; it'd be a nifty short-term solution instead of installing a PPC/based Linux on my Mac. (I'd like to not have to reboot my Mac if possible...)

  • Yep. Stardock [stardock.com] has a utility in beta called WindowFX that, among other things, allows you to set transparency levels on any application. You have to be a member of their Object Desktop Network to get the latest beta, but they did have a public preview back in February that I believe is still downloadable. It was slow, but usable, on a P3-500 with 256MB. I'm guessing they have it optimized better by now, but I'm not sure.

    I haven't signed up for the full network yet, but will probably do so soon. I've been trying out their WindowBlinds utility (also part of the network) and have been pretty impressed.
  • It's a java program. It will run anywhere where there is a good JVM present (that includes Linux BTW :).
  • This is good to hear, but I still don't think we are going to see anything drastic for a long while. I can wait, but there are others that can't....
    --
    Joshua Deere (dphase@locnet.net)
    UNIX Systems Administrator, LOCNET Internet Services
  • Unfortunately WierdX relies strongly on non-free (as in speech) components. I tried to execute it a few months ago with the kaffe JavaVM and although it started, it was refusing connections because of problems with the rgb database.

    Moreover, Swing, a non-free extension to Java, is required. So it is similar to the use of LyX (GPL) which relies on XForm (non-free).

    Those areas of development need to be adressed by free software developers if we want complete freedom in the Java world. Things are moving, but maybe not at a sufficient speed.
  • Really reminds me of those holographic displayes you see in movies all the time. FUNKY is all I can say
  • I use MI/X [microimages.com] at work, but I had to do a lot of work with the font configuration file to get a moderatley complex X app (Netscape LDAP console) to display properly.

    While it works fairly well, it is only fairly stable and comes with TWM - you might be able to use a window manager running on a remote box but I would imagine it would not like it much.

    In summary, it's OK for very simple uses but not really a good replacement for a real X system if you do a lot of work on a UNIX box. I found VNC a lot more useful.
  • The on going problem with window decorations has
    been that if they are too small, they are
    difficult to click on and when they are too large,
    too much screen space is wasted.

    If the the window manager used relatively large
    transparent borders and title bars, the problem is
    solved!

  • there are other X servers for mac, but none are free, that i know if, except MI/X - which exists in both PPC and 68K flavors, and there's a windows version as well. it can be had at: http://www.microimages.com/www/html/freestuf/mix/

    i've used it on my 8100 and G3 to run linux versions of X software from the 486 in my cupboard. if i were comfortable with java apps (the JVM is still really slow on even my G3/400. yuck) i'd try this guy out, as well. it sounds like fun.
  • # Doesent enlightenment do something like this?

    yes, but /something like/ is as far as it goes.
    you're thinking of Transclucent WINDOW DRAGGING which is pretty nifty, but I use icewm anyway.
  • Now that you know it suits your needs, you're going to buy it, right? That's what piracy defenders always say, they want to try things out before they buy them. Yeah, they have whole rows of shrinked rapped boxes of software sitting on the shelf because what's the point in opening it up? They already have the software.
  • I almost forgot the most annoying thing about MI/X - it doesn't support cut and paste from X to Windows. Happily, WeirdX does supports this both ways!
  • Are you using Jedit for a GUI application? If you wanna get some serious Java Swing/GUI work done you should be using a real IDE like Visual Age or JBuilder or even Forte
    Its almost impossible to do a complex screen using something like a GridBagLayout on a text editor even if it does some key-word color changing and indenting.
  • What's keeping XFree86 from having anti-aliased fonts?

  • Nice job Mircosfot.

    Microsoft didn't write it, Stardock did, read the post you replied to. The reason it requires so much is that it isn't really part of the window manager, so you've got the Windows drawing routine and the Stardock routine on top of that, each one chewing up its own memory and processor cycles. In E, for example, the Window manager can do the transparency by itself, so the duplication of effort is eliminated.
    Unfortunately, this is the best you can do in Windows, short of writing your own window manager, which has been done by Litestep, among others.
  • MI/X will work without the included TWM; you start the bare X server (xs.exe or whatever) and have XDM or something work it from a real system. I've got several windoze boxes that run MI/X this way, with FVWM2 for the window manager.

    It works as well as anything windoze.

  • Re:Transparent windows (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Heck, X10 (the version before X11, not the home automation system) had transparent windows.

    Yeah, and so does the other X10 (the home automation system). It's great, I pressed a button on my remote control, and the light went out. I turned and looked out the window, and there was my back yard, visible from inside the house! Isn't technology wonderful?

  • Ok ok, I've seen one good use up there a ways on the page, but what else? Some way to eat up all those spare clock cycles I have lying around?

    Similarly the transparencies in NT5 (I refuse to call it Win2k) really annoy me. The system seems soooooooooo slooooooooooooow while I wait for them to show up.

    So is this one of those 'because it's there' hacks or is there some purpose in mind?


  • Re:Imagine... (Score:4)

    by Nerds ( 126684 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2000 @11:46AM (#1037704) Homepage
    every flippin topic that goes through slashdot there is some retard that has to say something about beowulf clusters

    And every one of those has to have a reply complaining about the fact that every article has someone talking about Beowulf clusters. Damn, it's like we have a Beowulf cluseter of you people complaining about Beowulf clusters in some kind of recursive Beowulf cluster nightmare.

  • I've been using MI/X at work, a free X server. While it was OK to use, it's rather simple in nature, and I had to play around with font configuration a lot to get it to display complex apps with any degree of readability. It also lacked cut and paste from Windows to X, really annoying.

    I just tried WeirdX, and it's pretty good! The performance is OK, at least for a few windows (I'm running the recently released JDK 1.3). It supports cut & paste between X and Windows (or the mac I believe if you run it on a mac).

    It also seems to be pretty configurable as well, here are some of the more useful properties you can edit (in config/props if you don't specify them on the command line):

    # for specifying the size of the screen
    weirdx.display.width: numeral
    weirdx.display.height: numeral

    # Use this for seperate Windows type windows
    weirdx.windowmode: InBrowser | MultiWindow

    # check out the default - that's why some graphics look funky!
    weirdx.display.visual: TrueColor16 | PseudoColor8 | StaticGray8
    default: PseudoColor8

    # Set to yes for a a real three button mouse, otherwise you have to chord.
    weirdx.display.threebutton: yes | no
    default: no

    # Use this to activate the alpha hack, note that happily it's off by default so you can use it for real work.
    weirdx.display.background.alpha: numeral in decimal
    default: 255
  • ...and there is no way to make it faster because it's in java? I mean, it may be fine for windows users who believe that Unix boxes must have user interface as slow as Microsoft telnet makes them look, but for any real use X server must be fast and be capable of using graphics card's acceleration for everything that card allows to accelerate.
  • "you might be able to use a window manager running on a remote box but I would imagine it would not like it much."

    For a lark, I tried doing this with KDE (on a P75 with 16MB RAM, and I turned up all of the eye-candy - opaque window moves, etc..) - the results were amusing... (the word "slow" doesn't begin to describe it..)

    if I get bored some day I'll try it with Enlightenment :o)

  • He had the decency to create an account and log in, therefore his score started at 1.

    No moderation involved. No anti-Microsoft bias involved. Yes, you too can have posts with a non-zero (and positive) score if you don't hide behind the Anonymous Coward log in.

    Unless/until you post something stupid that gets you moderated downward, anyways. Then you can claim that your negative karma is due to the pro-Microsoft sentiment in your posts. :)
  • If that is the case then X must die. I hate to say it, but its true.

    I did some X programming, simple Xlib stuff. It is perverse how much the app has to do just to open up a window and draw pixels in it. You have to worry about what visual you get and what byte order and do all hte conversions yourself. Or use some high-level library which also has a disgusting interface and is way slow. Since I was playing around with 3D rendering, that just wouldn't do.

    Anyway, back to alpha rendering. If X has reached the point where it can't or won't be extended as needed, when needed, then it is time for something new. It is as simple as that.

    Innovate or die.

  • Sadly, I was wrong about a few of the properties:

    default display is really TrueColor16, so I'm not yet sure why the colors on some images looked odd.

    threebutton only toggles between supporting chording and not - the third button on my machine seems to just bring up the menu in an Xterm, and only the b1 & b2 chord seems to paste.

    The alpha, while cool, really slows down the thing quite a bit!
  • ...is to make the focused window solid, while all the others are translucent. The would help make it very clear which window you are working in, and looks so damned cool.

    - Josh "Yoshi" Steiner

    ---
    Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
    San Francisco based electronic music.
  • > but for any real use X server must be fast and be capable of using graphics card's acceleration for everything that card allows to accelerate.
    This X server can take advantage of "card" acceleration if it uses the Java2D API.

    Will it be as fast as a native C (or assembly) app ? Probably not, but your "acceleration" statement shows you don't know what you're talking about. Look up Java2D and Java3D and then come back with an opinion.

    BTW, it's usable on my machine, but the transperency stuff does make it too slugish. That's the prize you pay for fanciness. :)
  • Hey, speak for yourself. Some of us do know how to program complex layouts by hand. I actually used JBuilder for a while and got tired of it's generated code.

    Nothing like vi for good UI programming :-) (actually I just "discovered" gvim which is better)
  • Open mouth, insert foot. I didn't realize that there were two distinct products, and was looking at the wrong one. Comes from trying to bang code and do research at the same time. Mod me down, boys, I deserve it...
  • Actually windows(2k) do support transparency. Stardock's tool only sets WS_EX_LAYERED flag I belive.
    Check this [wonder.ca] page out.
  • I could see the benefits of adjustable transparency for heads-up displays, VR apps and simulators.

    It would be great for gaming as well

    ... and I'm sure that the CPU makers would love to find apps that required more gHz of cpu ;)
  • It may not be your favorite platform, but Win2K has support now for transparent, alpha-blended windows. MS uses it a bit in the interface already, for drag-and-drop, so that you can see what you are dropping icons on top off. It works quite well, especially with a fast video card, and the API is not a bugger to use at all.
  • Dammit, why do people make this mistake???? Drives me nuts.

    It's a very simple concept: without seams, smooth, continuous. Has nothing to do with the word "seem" or its derivatives.

    Oh, and "irregardless" really is a word, by the way.

  • Whatever you use remotely, if it's less than 10Mbps Ethernet, you have to use some compression -- LBX or ssh X forwarding with compression. XDMCP won't be of much use over a slow line -- use ssh X11 forwarding, and it will initialize your cookies correctly.
  • There's been some discussion about an alpha channel in X on the e-develop list for some time. Your idea of extending the xshape extension to include a 8 16 or 32 bpp alpha mask was discussed, the problem comes when a client tries to get information about their window, and their window happens to be alpha-blended in with 16 other windows... I personally think that it could be done through the xshape extension, but I'm not under any pretence that it would be easy. Nor do I know anything about X programming, otherwise I would go and do it myself.
    -Ted
  • Most of people don't install scalable fonts, and keep screen resolution set to 75 dpi, so all they get is smaller fonts.
  • from the web site:


    MI/X 2.0 for Windows is available for download. Simply unzip and run setup to install MI/X 2.0. You may use MI/X 2.0 for a trial period of 15 days to determine if it suits your needs. After the trial period you will need to purchase it for $25 US


    It is still free for mac though. And perhaps there is an older version that is free, but the one from their home site is not.

    --Scott
  • Your problem is that you don't have enough memory. If you had say, 128 megs or more, JDK1.3 would do native compile in memory and it runs pretty fast (the more free memory the more code it will compile). It is especially fast for 2D graphics stuff and they say they got scientific/math code to run withing 5% of C++ code. Swing is still kinda slow though, but not horrible. I use JBuilder at work and it is large and slow, but with a lot of RAM (256 recommended) it's not too bad.
  • When I first saw that effect I thought I had found one of our 65k bugs. Then of course I realized it was a real feature. It is a rather neat effect, maybe one GNOME or KDE can impliment sometime.
  • Perl Window Manager [colorado.edu]

    OKay, so I know it's mostly dead, but there is one.

  • I hadn't realized this - I just looked over the site and FAQ again and realized the new version (I think it's new) not only costs money now, but really doesn't appear to be much improved:

    Runs X11R5, not R6
    License works on a per computer basis - multi-site licence must be housed on an NT box.
    No source code
    No XDM queries (they appear in preferences but the FAQ says they are unsupported)
    No xauth support
    No font server support (must install all fonts locally)

    And finally, for a bit of humor take a look at this question from the FAQ:

    Q: Does MI/X support psuedocolor?

    A: Yes, if your local display is set to 256 colors (8 bit)

    In other words, Windows does the dithering, we just take the credit!

    In fairness $15 is a small sum, but I would definatley try both WeirdX as well as MI/X before choosing to buy it. And frankly, they'd have to pay ME $15 for the hassle of dealing with a licence server.
  • I made some remarks, stating that the original
    poster didn't have a clue, concerning OO-programming.
    OO is _not_ directly connected to not being compiled. (Although java sortof is).

    I also made a comment about java being an interpreted language, and that this was a problem.
    Is this _really_ worth a minus one, redundant?

    I'm disappointed by this. As a former javaprogrammer, still enjoying the language, I feel it is fair to state that having it as a
    compiled language would make it much more usable
    as a generic programming language.
    The native-compilers that exist for Linux seem
    promising, but not at all finished yet.


  • One use of transparency is in the Air Traffic control industry. A military flight will be detailed as transparent as the Civilian controller wants to know it is there _all_ of the time, but also wants to be able see the civilian aircraft he is meant to be directing.

  • After the trial period you will need to purchase it for $25

    Or fire up regedit, remove all entries from your registry that contain the phrase "MicroImages" and reinstall. It won't timeout again. Alternatively, as you say, you could try and find a copy of MI/X v1. I have a copy at home somewhere. Personally, I've given up on MI/X -- it was just too slow. We had to bite the bullet and go for a copy of Exceed instead. Much faster, but its font handling sucks (although no worse than MI/X, it has to be said).

  • Some folks are working on a Cygwin based port of X11 for Windows.

    So it might be interesting to have a look at their developers mailing lists.

  • Read the font howto. Basically, you need to set your X resources to make Netscape do 96 or 100 or 101 or whatever DPI you'd like it to do.

  • ... which includes a bunch of other useful information that you won't find anywhere else. Including for example, how to make those tiny Netscape fonts a tad larger.

  • Actually, no it isn't. X is acutally simpler than most for opening up a window and drawing arbitrary pixels. What you're probably used to is a toolkit implementation of the same thing. If you actually tried to do programming in the Windows GDI interface or in raw Macintosh QuickDraw, you'd quickly agree with me. You might try gdk, the drawing kit for gtk+. It's closer to what you want.

    ---------------------------------
  • This may be a naive question, but I'm wondering if it is valid to license a java application under the GPL if it uses Sun's libraries, which are licensed under SCSL. Looking on the GNU web site, they have java packages available under the GPL but I believe these use the Kaffe libraries, not Sun's. Kaffe does not include that many Java2 features yet, however.

    I'm asking because I develop free software(tm) for the java2 platform and would like to release under the GPL, but have so far stuck with the LGPL.

    -OT

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