I'm looking for a way to make a toplevel window transparent for mouse clicks and keyboard events. So basically it has to be only visible for the user, not interfere with what else happens on the desktop. (will be transparent) I looked at various options like setting a mask, but that also makes the window disappear where the mask is set. So what I need is a mask, only for user actions, not for visibility.
I got this to work in PyGtk using input_shape_combine_mask()
which accesses x11 shape extensions. I looked for a similar function in PyQt but couldn't find it. In other posts I find it has been done in PyQt under windows. But x11 I couldn't find yet. Any suggestions?
Related
Is there a way to make a Qt window (qml with pyside2) to never minimize?
(Not the minimize button)
I'm trying to achieve something like conky (Linux) or rainmeter (Windows) with python 3 and qml (Qt).
I want a borderless window to stay on the back of the screen and stay there no matter what as if it's part of the wallpaper. Making the window borderless was achieved with the Qt.SplashScreen flag but disabling minimize turns out to be much harder than I initially thought. All the methods I've tried hides the window when win+D is pressed.
I would like to be able to toggle between framed and frameless window in my Electron app, without needing to construct a new window. This is because this option is a different view than what would be initially loaded, therefore it would be nice if there is a way to change the current window to be frameless.
I have found window.setFullscreen() for toggling between full screen mode. I've not been able to find anything similar for frameless window. Is there any such method or workaround that I'm not seeing?
As the docs go, you enable or disable window frame at the time of creation of browser window. After that, there are no methods you can call to enable or disable frame. However, if you really really want that option, there may be a workaround. And a workaround, is well, a workaround.
Create 2 browser windows, one over the other. The first one being transparent window(with frame and click-through) and the second one being your content window(without frame).
Implement your custom solution to keep size and position of both the windows in sync. Use ipc to share data between the windows.
Toggle the visibility of the transparent browser window to show/hide frame.
Some relevant resources:
Creating frameless window : https://electronjs.org/docs/api/frameless-window#create-a-frameless-window
Creating transparent window : https://electronjs.org/docs/api/frameless-window#transparent-window
I would like to draw some sort of window on top of all the other windows. For example, to display some debugging infos (like conky) or things like a timer.
The main thing is that I would like to able to continue using the other windows while using it (the events go through transparently).
I've tried doing it with pygtk, pyqt and others but can't find a way to make it a real overlay with no event capture.
Is there some low-level x11 solution?
I think the Composite-extension-approach will not work when a compositing manager is running (and thus Composite's overlay window is already used).
Since you explicitly mention "no event capture":
The SHAPE extension allows to set some different shapes for a window. Version 1.1 of this extension added the "input" shape. Just setting this to an empty region should pretty much do what you want.
Some concrete example of exactly what I think you ask for can be found in Conky's source code: http://sources.debian.net/src/conky/1.10.3-1/src/x11.cc/?hl=769#L764-L781
Edit: Since you said that you didn't find anything in Gtk (well, PyGtk), here is the function that you need in Gtk: https://developer.gnome.org/gdk3/stable/gdk3-Windows.html#gdk-window-input-shape-combine-region
You might need Composite extension + GetOverlayWindow request:
Version 0.3 of the protocol adds the Composite Overlay Window, which
provides compositing managers with a surface on which to draw without
interference. This window is always above normal windows and is always
below the screen saver window. It is an InputOutput window whose width
and height are the screen dimensions. Its visual is the root visual
and its border width is zero. Attempts to redirect it using the
composite extension are ignored. This window does not appear in the
reply of the QueryTree request. It is also an override redirect
window. These last two features make it invisible to window managers
and other X11 clients. The only way to access the XID of this window
is via the CompositeGetOverlayWindow request. Initially, the Composite
Overlay Window is unmapped.
CompositeGetOverlayWindow returns the XID of the Composite Overlay
Window. If the window has not yet been mapped, it is mapped by this
request. When all clients who have called this request have terminated
their X11 connections the window is unmapped.
Composite managers may render directly to the Composite Overlay
Window, or they may reparent other windows to be children of this
window and render to these. Multiple clients may render to the
Composite Overlay Window, create child windows of it, reshape it, and
redefine its input region, but the specific arbitration rules followed
by these clients is not defined by this specification; these policies
should be defined by the clients themselves.
C api : XCompositeGetOverlayWindow
PyGTK Solution:
I think the composite and shapes X extensions are sufficiently ubiquitous and shall assume here that they are active on your system. Here's PyGtk code for this:
# avoid title bar and standard window minimize, maximize, close buttons
win.set_decorated(False)
# make the window stick above all others (super button will still override it in the z-order, which is fine)
win.set_keep_above(True)
# make events pass through
region = cairo.Region(cairo.RectangleInt(0, 0, 0, 0))
my_window.input_shape_combine_region(region)
win.show_all()
# set the entire window to be semi-transparent, if we like
win.set_opacity(0.2)
Basically what this does is tell Gtk that other than pixel (0,0) the entire window my_window should not be considered part of itself in terms of event propagation. That in turn, according to my current understanding means that when the pointer moves and clicks, the events go to the underlying window under the pointer position, as if my_window was not there.
Caveat:
This does allow your overlay window being the focus window (due to user-solicited window switching or just because it pops up and gets the focus when your application starts). Which means that for example, keyboard events will still undesirably go to it up until the user has clicked through it to make it lose focus in favor of whatever window is under the cursor. I would likely use the approach described here to iron out this aspect.
If there's a different and proper approach for making a portion of the screen "display stuff but not receive events", without building an oddball window like above over it, I'm happy to learn about it.
I assume that one's particular desktop environment (gnome, unity, etc. on linux) may interfere with this solution depending on version and configuration, on some occasions.
It specifically says in the Wayland TODO text file that Wayland doesn't have active grabs for the pointer yet. But if I run Gnome on Wayland, try clicking a menu open and then clicking outside it, the outside click is swallowed as if the pointer was grabbed by the menu window. How does Gnome manage that?
What you are talking about can be done very easily by creating a transparent overlay over the entire screen. In that case, the click events on the transparent region will not propagate to the underlying elements. You can see this in Telegram's image viewer, where it creates a full-screen gray overlay under the image.
But on the compositor side this effect can be achieved in a different way-- by disabling all input events outside the popup rectangle.
I am trying to create a dockable window in Qt (it sits taking 4px width at the edge of the screen, always on top and it slides out when you hover it). I have to use WindowFlag BypassX11WindowManager (in order to hide taskbar hint, disable moving/resizing/etc. from window manager). I use these flags:
Qt::FramelessWindowHint
Qt::CustomizeWindowHint
Qt::X11BypassWindowManagerHint
Qt::WindowStaysOnTopHint
When I need my dock to be activated, I use the activateWindow() method. However, I have no idea, how to deactivate it.
Is there a way I can force my window deactivate? Now I can do it only by clicking another window and then return to the one that was active before revealing dock.
You should be able to use ->hide() to simply hide it if you don't want it to appear at certain points.
I assume, by the way, you know there is QDockWidget/ class that may help you as well. It's unclear from the above if you're using it or not.