Tutorial

The following tutorial session demonstrates the operation of the Translucent option. The prerequisites are:

XmetaX must be installed totally (Installation).

You must be logged into an X Window environment with XmetaX proxy and the Translucent option must be configured (Options).

If you use a window manager, it must be connected to the XmetaX proxy, too. The easiest way to do this is integrating XmetaX into the X Window environment (Integration).

You will have to start a terminal emulator like xterm, cmdtool, dtterm, etc. from the command line.

First, change the command path so that the shell can find the XmetaX proxy and the translucent program in the installation directory /opt/XSOXmetaX (Installation directories). Modify the command path accordingly, for instance using the Bourne shell:

PATH="$PATH:/opt/XSOXmetaX/bin"
export PATH

or with the C shell:

set path=($path /opt/XSOXmetaX/bin)

If you want to start the XmetaX proxy manually without integrating it into the X Window environment, then choose a free X Window display number, for instance :1, and set the $DISPLAY environment variable accordingly, using the Bourne shell:

DISPLAY=:1
export DISPLAY

or with the C shell:

setenv DISPLAY :1

Now you can start the XmetaX proxy in the background:

cd
xmetax $DISPLAY display :0 accessControl off &

Now start a terminal emulator, give an individual name to the window and determine the displayed colors:

xterm -name "translucent" -bg white -fg black -cr red &

There are several ways to make the white background transparent, i.e. to include the color white into the set of transparency colors. You may specify all parameters on the command line:

translucent -name "translucent" -color white

Now the terminal emulator shows only the text and the text cursor. For improving the readability and the display performance of text, it is displayed on a white background, although white should be transparent. You may disable this optimization, of course:

translucent -name "translucent" -color white -translucentImageText

You delete a color from the set of transparency colors using the -undo argument:

translucent -name "translucent" -color white -undo

You may specify the window by a mouse click (the pointer image changes accordingly):

translucent -color white

If you want to disable the white transparency using the command

translucent -color white -undo

you have to click exactly on the terminal emulator display, that is into the text area. If you click into the transparent area, you address the window beneath the terminal emulator window, possibly the root window.

You may specify the transparency color by a mouse click on the white background or on the black text:

translucent
translucent -undo

You may add more colors to the set of transparency colors, using multiple commands or a single command:

translucent -name "translucent" -color white -color black \
    -translucentImageText

Now you see no text at all, only the red text cursor.

If you do not specify a color with the argument -undo, all transparency is disabled:

translucent -name "translucent" -undo

All the examples above displayed the complete window decoration. Depending on the window manager you may specify a minimum decoration using the -decoration argument:

translucent -name "translucent" -color white \
    -decoration -translucentImageText

Most window managers show the top part of the decoration only.

Finally, close the terminal emulator window. If you started the XmetaX proxy manually, terminate it:

xmetaxtool -terminate