GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 695371
Transparent option disappears in 3.7.x
Last modified: 2017-01-16 23:42:38 UTC
Transparency isn't supported anymore.
Why was this feature removed. I'm ok if you remove it from preferences dialog and just leave it to be configured directly from gconf, but *please* bring it back. It was the most useful feature when I'm working on my laptop without a 2nd screen attached. I used it a lot to, for example, have a web page or data sheet open behind some code I'm editing. And yes, I know about devilspie hack.. and no, I don't really want to make my *entire* window translucent, just the terminal area.
*** Bug 698612 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The devilspie hack that i am using : (if (is (application_name) "Terminal") (opacity 90) ) in ~/.devilspie/foo.ds is making the whole windows translucent, which is not ideal. Even if we can restrict it to just 1 widget, that would still make the font translucent, which make it not ideal, and so not a replacement.
yeah, I am using the devilspie hack too, but it is really not ideal. I'd *really* like the transparent option back, even if it is completely unofficial/unsupported and not visible in the UI.. I don't mind configuring it manually via gconf.
For now, I am using sakura ( who support this ), so the option is still in VTE it seems. But at least, this should be in the release notes or in the NEWS file ( but maybe that's too late ? )
*** Bug 698626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #7) > *** Bug 698626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** OK. Thanks for the pointer. Could you please release some details on why this is feature is removed?
Persch didn’t like it. That’s all. Here’s a quote On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 23:23 +0200, Christian Persch wrote: However, in many discussions with other developers, nobody > has ever been able to explain to me why transparency would be an > essential feature of a terminal, but not of, say, a text editor, a web > browser, a mail reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet... do _you_ have > a good argument? :-) For the record, I gave him two screens full of very good, pertinent reasons, still he ignored everything and is now sitting in his lair quietly chuckling to himself. So someone else spent his time coding this feature, people use and love this feature, and then this one guy comes along and decides that he doesn’t see the point, so let’s remove it? WTH gnome? There wasn’t even a re-design that lead to this. Only spite?
(In reply to comment #9) > Persch didn’t like it. That’s all. > > Here’s a quote > > On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 23:23 +0200, Christian Persch wrote: > > However, in many discussions with other developers, nobody > > has ever been able to explain to me why transparency would be an > > essential feature of a terminal, but not of, say, a text editor, a web > > browser, a mail reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet... do _you_ have > > a good argument? :-) > > > For the record, I gave him two screens full of very good, pertinent reasons, > still he ignored everything and is now sitting in his lair quietly chuckling to > himself. > > So someone else spent his time coding this feature, people use and love this > feature, and then this one guy comes along and decides that he doesn’t see the > point, so let’s remove it? > > WTH gnome? There wasn’t even a re-design that lead to this. Only spite? Well the argument I would like to give is: text in the terminals are have background colors, while terminal backgrounds are colorless -- no specification say your terminal background colors is white or black. Right? An obvious application for this is editors like Emacs or Vim. Status bar of those terminal applications are using black or white background colors. If terminal color could be transparent, then we can clearly see the boundary between mini-buffers and status bars. Using this feature at a daily basis is already a very strong argument. I believe other user could bring more examples as well.
Okay here’s what my reasons were, almost exactly a year ago. You see, following git closely doesn’t always help. Waiting for release time however is certainly too late, because they will only say "No" and that’s that. You may notice that my justification for transparency was a little more on the fuzzy, emotional well-being side (nonetheless valid reason I might add): On Do, 2012-05-03 at 23:23 +0200, Christian Persch wrote: > First, note that all this is only on gnome-terminal git master, not on > the released 3.4.x, and also it's not yet been decided whether 3.6 > will contain this or only a later release. > > The removal of the background preferences has solved a number of bugs, > however most of that from the background image support, not > transparency. So transparency may yet be added again; there's a > preferences dialogue redesign coming soon. Many thanks for the explanation. If it’s about the preferences dialog. I agree. It can be simplified a lot. And there a things which make not much sense, like background image. > However, in many discussions with other developers, nobody > has ever been able to explain to me why transparency would be an > essential feature of a terminal, but not of, say, a text editor, a web > browser, a mail reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet... do _you_ have > a good argument? :-) Ok. Let me give you two. The first is purely psychological and about my well-being. If I use a simple looking, bland app the whole day then sometimes I get this eerie feeling of perceptual understimulation. Very seasoned hackers maybe never had this, or they’ve overcome this. They could hack away on the actual vt console or tiled WMs with tesselated urxvts without ever tiring of it. But myself I get this claustrophic notion of utter flatness sometimes at late hours, columns of numbers running by, a rigid matrix. Now when compiz came along with some modicum of animation this improved a lot. Just sliding smoothly across the desktops with windows gliding over the background helps. It gives a notion of dimensionality. The amount of animation in Shell is suffient and what made me stick to Shell is the well-made shadows as well. But the biggest effect is due to translucency. If you will, there’s a world behind the matrix, poking through. I took a liking to floral backgrounds. It helps my mood. If anything is problematic about transparency, it is stacking translucent terminals on top of other text-containing windows. Now, I rarely do this and I have a very high opacity anyway. The background just barely shines through and there’s the WM shadow. For this usability problem a shader-based blur would help. It might be the time already where this is feasible for most machines. I think Ubuntu has fast blur for their stuff, but I don’t know specifics. The second reason is that in Gnome the terminal is the only program that still leverages RGBA visuals. Just for the sole reason of making sure that RGBA works with regular apps, it makes sense to keep this in. Some years ago there was a push for semi-translucency in the GTK themes themselves. This Cimitan guy was working on this. This was not my cup of tea, but looking at the techniques makes sense, since in some situations semi-translucency gives apps an extra something. Also with Wayland on the horizon g-t is a good test case and makes eating the dogfood easy. Gedit surely could use transparency, but I rarely use it so I don’t complain there. > One way for this feature to come back, would be on the g-t side > to just set an ARGB visual, and then let the desktop theme take care > of setting the opacity from CSS. That would be fine with me. But consider this: If g-t will have a background color selector (which I guess will stay at any rate) enable the alpha slider in the color picker dialog via GTK, if alpha is < 1, then you enable RGBA visual. This would remove any transparency related options in the preferences themselves. --Tobias
(In reply to comment #11) > Okay here’s what my reasons were, almost exactly a year ago. You see, following > git closely doesn’t always help. Waiting for release time however is certainly > too late, because they will only say "No" and that’s that. > > You may notice that my justification for transparency was a little more on the > fuzzy, emotional well-being side (nonetheless valid reason I might add): > > On Do, 2012-05-03 at 23:23 +0200, Christian Persch wrote: > > > First, note that all this is only on gnome-terminal git master, not on > > the released 3.4.x, and also it's not yet been decided whether 3.6 > > will contain this or only a later release. > > > > The removal of the background preferences has solved a number of bugs, > > however most of that from the background image support, not > > transparency. So transparency may yet be added again; there's a > > preferences dialogue redesign coming soon. > > > Many thanks for the explanation. If it’s about the preferences dialog. I > agree. It can be simplified a lot. And there a things which make not > much sense, like background image. > > > However, in many discussions with other developers, nobody > > has ever been able to explain to me why transparency would be an > > essential feature of a terminal, but not of, say, a text editor, a web > > browser, a mail reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet... do _you_ have > > a good argument? :-) > > Ok. Let me give you two. > > The first is purely psychological and about my well-being. If I use a > simple looking, bland app the whole day then sometimes I get this eerie > feeling of perceptual understimulation. Very seasoned hackers maybe > never had this, or they’ve overcome this. They could hack away on the > actual vt console or tiled WMs with tesselated urxvts without ever > tiring of it. But myself I get this claustrophic notion of utter > flatness sometimes at late hours, columns of numbers running by, a rigid > matrix. > > Now when compiz came along with some modicum of animation this improved > a lot. Just sliding smoothly across the desktops with windows gliding > over the background helps. It gives a notion of dimensionality. The > amount of animation in Shell is suffient and what made me stick to Shell > is the well-made shadows as well. > > But the biggest effect is due to translucency. If you will, there’s a > world behind the matrix, poking through. I took a liking to floral > backgrounds. It helps my mood. > > If anything is problematic about transparency, it is stacking > translucent terminals on top of other text-containing windows. Now, I > rarely do this and I have a very high opacity anyway. The background > just barely shines through and there’s the WM shadow. > > For this usability problem a shader-based blur would help. It might be > the time already where this is feasible for most machines. I think > Ubuntu has fast blur for their stuff, but I don’t know specifics. > > > The second reason is that in Gnome the terminal is the only program that > still leverages RGBA visuals. Just for the sole reason of making sure Same here. I run Emacs under terminal sometime just to get transparent background. (Emacs doesn't support that due to complex reasons, and transparent the whole window will also transparent the text and status bar.) > that RGBA works with regular apps, it makes sense to keep this in. Some > years ago there was a push for semi-translucency in the GTK themes > themselves. This Cimitan guy was working on this. This was not my cup of > tea, but looking at the techniques makes sense, since in some situations > semi-translucency gives apps an extra something. Also with Wayland on > the horizon g-t is a good test case and makes eating the dogfood easy. > > Gedit surely could use transparency, but I rarely use it so I don’t > complain there. > > > One way for this feature to come back, would be on the g-t side > > to just set an ARGB visual, and then let the desktop theme take care > > of setting the opacity from CSS. > > That would be fine with me. But consider this: > > If g-t will have a background color selector (which I guess will stay at > any rate) enable the alpha slider in the color picker dialog via GTK, if > alpha is < 1, then you enable RGBA visual. This would remove any > transparency related options in the preferences themselves. > > --Tobias
Mike Qin: Please strip unneeded full-quotes to keep the thread readable. Tobias Wolf: Read https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/ or I'll ban you. I'm tired of your personal attacks and I don't see any improvement so far.
(In reply to comment #11) > On Do, 2012-05-03 at 23:23 +0200, Christian Persch wrote: > > > The removal of the background preferences has solved a number of bugs, > > however most of that from the background image support, not > > transparency. So transparency may yet be added again; there's a > > preferences dialogue redesign coming soon. In reply to the original thread (wherever that was), I don't really mind if there is no preferences GUI to configure transparency, and even if it is considered as unsupported, as long as there is a way to configure it via gconf. And I don't really care about background images. But I really find transparency essential when I'm working on just the laptop screen (without 2nd large monitor hooked up). And I also find it useful for testing DDX & mesa. So please, please, *please* leave it in, even if it has to be configured via cmdline/gconf! BR, -R
Created attachment 243732 [details] Screenshot: Color picker with alpha slider Back on topic, the new GTK3 color picker dialog has a slider for transparency value (see attachment). There’s still the button to choose the background color in > 3.8. Just go and take the transparency value from that dialog and you can support transparency with less clutter in the main preferences compared to 3.6. But it would requre putting argb_visual back. Mission accomplished.
> An obvious application for this is editors like Emacs or Vim. Status bar of those terminal applications are using black or white background colors. If terminal color could be transparent, then we can clearly see the boundary between mini-buffers and status bars. So what? Transparency function is not enabled by default, so emacs users are not affected. They are not forced to enable it. I can choose in preferences unreadable font, but that is no reason to prohibit the change fonts.
*** Bug 698789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 698544 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 702708 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Let's wait for the transparent feature come back. But we can do something by ourselves. I have written a small script to change the opacity of the gnome-terminal window automatically when it starts. Save the code below as ~/.tools/terminal.sh, and grant execute access to it: #!/bin/bash OPACITY=${1} TRANSPARENCY_HEX=$(printf 0x%x $[0xffffffff*OPACITY/100]) LOGIN_SHELL=$(getent passwd ${LOGNAME} | cut -d : -f 7) xprop -id ${WINDOWID} -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY ${TRANSPARENCY_HEX} exec ${LOGIN_SHELL} #script end Then make it work by: 1. Open the gnome-terminal's profile preferences dialog 2. Switch to tab 'Title and Command' 3. Check the 'Run a custom command instead of my shell' option 4. Type '.tools/terminal.sh 80' in the 'Custom command' text input 5. Close the dialog and open a new gnome-terminal window to enjoying the transparent-ed command line interface. I set the opacity to 80% in the step 4 by specifying 80 as an argument to the script, you can change it to other number as you like.
The best option that I've discovered is to install xfce-terminal because the transparency option is still available. I'll try downgrading to an earlier version of gnome just in case xfce-terminal developers start smoking the same stuff the gnome-terminal developers are.
(In reply to comment #16) > > An obvious application for this is editors like Emacs or Vim. Status bar of > those terminal applications are using black or white background colors. If > terminal color could be transparent, then we can clearly see the boundary > between mini-buffers and status bars. > > So what? Transparency function is not enabled by default, so emacs users are > not affected. They are not forced to enable it. I can choose in preferences > unreadable font, but that is no reason to prohibit the change fonts. You got me wrong. I'm saying, if transparency feature is removed, it will affect Emacs and Vim users. BTW It seems this bug report has been here for a long time. Is gnome-terminal still under active development?
(In reply to comment #22) > Is gnome-terminal still under active development? http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/log/
(In reply to comment #23) > (In reply to comment #22) > > Is gnome-terminal still under active development? > > http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/log/ Thanks for the pointer. Any news on getting the transparent options back? I take a quick look on the master branch, it doesn't seem to be there yet right now.
(In reply to comment #24) > Any news on getting the transparent options back? No, and I don't expect any "news" on that currently.
Created attachment 250513 [details] [review] Patch
(In reply to comment #14) > So please, please, *please* leave it in, even if it has to > be configured via cmdline/gconf! Agreed, it wouldn't hurt anybody to have it as at least a hidden setting. And doing so is a one-liner. See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=250513
Nice patch Michael. I wasn't willing to spend time reading Gnome Terminal's source so the simpler solution was to install MATE Terminal instead.
Created attachment 266619 [details] [review] patch for gnome-3.8 Enable transparency via gsettings/dconf/gconf gnome-terminal profile property background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8)
(In reply to comment #29) > Created an attachment (id=266619) [details] [review] > patch for gnome-3.8 > > Enable transparency via gsettings/dconf/gconf gnome-terminal profile property > > background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8) Tried it out. It works with metacity --composite, but it doesn’t with Gnome Shell. Do you know why that is?
(In reply to comment #30) > > Tried it out. It works with metacity --composite, but it doesn’t with Gnome > Shell. Do you know why that is? It's rare, I'm using gnome-shell-3.8.4 and it works like a charm. What version is your gnome-shell?
Neither 3.11.4 nor 3.10.x. Any tips on how to diagnose this?
I just want to give you my feedback as user. I'm also disappointed by the removal of transparency background. I don't care about image background. I read all this thread and it seems there are several good reasons to allow user to configure transparency. There're also a lot of proposition to not overload the preference page and let this simple. I really hope this feature will be back in gnome-terminal. In all case, thanks gnome community (developers, designers, users ...) for your work.
seems I'm behind the loop, just ran an upgrade and was reminded why I tend to wait to do so I see a couple of patches above that restore transparency as a hidden option any chances of these being implemented or should I just compile a custom version? being able to view layers on my screen with a terminal has become such a standard in my workflow that I'm installing xfce-terminal because it's not acceptable to not have but have a slew of scripts built around gnome-terminal that I'd rather not start rebuilding... as a question was there any kind of community review of this "feature removal" before it was implemented -- based on the number of discussions in google and duplicate bug reports this does seem to have come out of left field for many that aren't part of gnome dev team (btw: thanks guys for the work)
> as a question was there any kind of community review No, maintainers are not meant to become slaves of popularity contests.
I'm not looking to start an argument but putting user base in a vacuum doesn't seem like a strong strategy to build from... then again I'm not on the dev list so my input is minimal, I'm just one guy that uses gnome shell on daily basis do you know what kind of review did take place for this decision? think I might wanna get more involved in development of a few more of the tools I use - had there been any kind of post about this being removed I would have locked my last version in place and not updated till I was ready to tinker with code and compiling, as it is there's barely a reference inside the repo commit comments about it...
(In reply to comment #32) > Neither 3.11.4 nor 3.10.x. > > Any tips on how to diagnose this? The window property _NET_WM_OPAQUE_REGION seems to be the cause, metacity ignores this property.
(In reply to comment #37) > The window property _NET_WM_OPAQUE_REGION seems to be the cause, metacity > ignores this property. So your patch is incomplete for later GS versions?
For the records: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Terminal/FAQ?action=show&redirect=Terminal%252FFAQ#How_can_I_make_the_terminal_transparent.3F
Thanks Andre, but repeatedly posting that doesn't change the fact that the demonstrated opacity trick is not the same as a partially transparent terminal background. It's "ersatz"
Tobias: It's been repeatedly said that we all know it's not exactly the same. There had been zero links to that wikipage in this bug report before.
Created attachment 268320 [details] [review] patch for gnome-3.10 Use css to make TerminalWindow widget background transparent or opaque.
Created attachment 268346 [details] [review] Add alpha slider to profile editor bg color button Bingo. However GtkNotebook tab background is transparent too. Maybe pick a different widget? Here’s a small add-on patch to allow setting alpha directly in the dialog
Created attachment 268440 [details] [review] patch for gnome-3.10 Now menubar is styled correctly and alpha slider in shown in the profile editor bg color button
Thanks a lot. It’s ridiculous how much energy we expended discussing this (incl. unnecessary public outrage) when the patch to bring it back is so simple. Anyhow, if anybody interested in this is using Ubuntu, here’s a PPA: ppa:towolf/transparent-gnome-terminal
You're welcome. I did this because I love to have a transparent terminal background. But a more elegant solution (the current is a bad hack) lies in rewrite vte and make use of gtk3 capabilities like css theming.
Thanks for the patches and the easy-to-use-ppa for a noob like me.
@aj2r Many thanks for the patch and your efforts. @TobiasWolf Thanks for the PPA and your efforts. I've added the PPA, but when I try to update, it says: $ sudo apt-get upgrade The following packages have been kept back: gnome-terminal gnome-terminal-data Isn't it enough just to add the PPA and then run apt-get update/upgrade ?
Elin, are you on trusty? Why is it kept back? Try "apt-get install gnome-terminal", and look at the messages. I don’t expect conflicts, but there might be some.
Does anybody know if it is available a pacth for gnome-terminal 3.12? Regards Andrea
Tobias, I didn't first notice that ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 and ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging repositories are required to be able to update gnome-terminal. I've added the 2 ppas and it worked like a charm. Thanks a lot again.
> I've added the 2 ppas and it worked like a charm. Ah right. Forgot about that, sorry.
Created attachment 274727 [details] [review] patch for gnome-3.12 @Andrea, attached. It only needed minor updates.
@Tobias, thanks a lot for the patch and your prompt response :)) Andrea
aj2r 2014-02-06 18:06:12 UTC wrote: > Use css to make TerminalWindow widget background transparent or opaque. Could someone elaborate a bit on how to make the patched gnome-terminal (from ppa:towolf/transparent-gnome-terminal) have semi-transparent background? I tried something like in https://gist.github.com/wteuber/7333512 but without any luck. Frankly, I've become critically dependent on this feature when working in vim and watching online tv at the background. And with the advent of Trusty Tahr got very frustrated.
krocha, make sure you pick a background color with opacity component, as in this screenshot (choose custom color and note the slider at the bottom): http://imgur.com/yvQ1zM4.png
Tobias, thanks for your time, I confirm it works :) The problem seems to be caused by my wrong ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css :) When I removed it, transparency worked out just fine except for the menu which turned out to be completely transparent. But I can certainly live with it. However, I was quite satisfied with this alternative solution to my background transparency problem: sudo apt-get remove gnome-terminal; sudo apt-get install lxterminal :)
This is for 3.14: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/gnome-terminal.git/plain/0001-Restore-transparency-gnome-3-14.patch
Hi, I'm working under Debian Testing (jessie) with GNOME Shell 3.14.2. I added ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 and ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging, but I get "W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu/dists/jessie/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found" and "W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3-staging/ubuntu/dists/jessie/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found". I am wondering what I could/should try next and whether the patch will work for 3.14.2? Thanks & cheers, Marius
The latest fedora patch for 3.14 is here: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/gnome-terminal.git/plain/0001-Restore-transparency-gnome-3-14.patch?h=f21 The latest fedora patch for 3.16 is here: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/gnome-terminal.git/tree/gnome-terminal-restore-transparency.patch As for myself, the fact that Fedora restored this feature over 5 consecutive major upstream releases speaks a lot. And we also want it in Kali Linux. We are not GNOME developers but we have been contracting with GNOME contributors to implement some of the features that we want... if the above patch were not available, we would have looked for someone to do it. Please reconsider including this feature. Relying on the alpha channel of the background color makes a lot of sense and avoids most of the clutter regarding preferences. What are the objections of developers against this?
And FTR Ubuntu also restored it: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/gnome-terminal/ubuntu/view/head:/debian/patches/0001-Restore-transparency.patch
bug still occurs on gnome 3.16 w/ gnome-terminal 3.16 (this is in ubuntu 15.10) transparency can be enabled by editing the profile preferences and changing the slider a bit my preferred fix is ... use Konsole :)
In Ubuntu 15.10 I have the following behaviour: 1) Transparency works with the default theme and custom colours 2) Changing the theme will only break the transparency after a restart 3) Changing the theme to default and back reenables transparency until restart
I've been using gnome-terminal since 2012. It has been a pain since the transparency feature has been removed but I managed to activate it using devilspie. However, now at 3.22.1-1 it is not detected by devilspie. This led me once again explore ways to restore it and lose time because of this unjustified removal. Since I don't want to install a patched version that is maintained by one user, I decided to change the terminal. I don't need to justify further that this feature is essential. It would be trivial to understand its importance. Moreover, it has been pointed out by others as important and it has been restored across various distributions. This is a serious "not caring" about the users. It is disappointing since Gnome has always been at top for its excellent user experience on various levels. For any souls at this point and looking for pleasant looking terminals, try: termite and configure the colors with terminal.sexy website (you can export them to its format). Also there is lxterminal as pointed previously but the colors configuration is less clear. Please, care about your users and integrate it before loosing more users.
I believe GNOME Terminal on Fedora Rawhide has transparency even though GNOME Terminal on Debian Sid does not. Devilspie has been replaced with Devilspie2, which seems to work fine on Debian Sid and Fedora Rawhide – but only if using Xorg. As soon as you try Wayland all transparency is gone as Devilspie2 cannot work with Wayland.
If you search a replacement, Terminix is a really good terminal for GNOME 3 and it handles transparency. https://github.com/gnunn1/terminix It is available on Debian Sid : https://packages.debian.org/sid/terminix
I was having serious issues with OpenGL and it turns out to be Wayland which were causing the segfault. Going back to X11 made devilspie great again which in turn made gnome-terminal aesthetically pleasant again by the user of transparency. I want to point out that at the current moment, it is still possible to use gnome-terminal with devilspie to configure its transparency but only with X11 not with Wayland. You can easily make this switch at the login screen by clicking on the gear near your username!