I want to draw transparent windows (with alpha channel) on Linux (GTK) and OSX. Is there an API to do that ? Note that I don't want to set a global transparency, the alpha level should be set per pixel.
I'm looking for the same kind of API than the UpdateLayeredWindow function on Windows, as in this example: Per Pixel Alpha Blend.
For Mac OS X, see the RoundTransparentWindow sample code. It works by using a custom completely transparent window and drawing shapes in it. Although the example only uses shapes with hard edges + overall alpha, arbitrary alpha can be used.
Although the example uses a custom window, you can use the same technique to punch holes in normal windows by calling setOpaque:NO
. Hacky example:
@implementation ClearView
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect
{
if (mask == nil) mask = [[NSImage imageNamed:@"mask"] retain];
[self.window setOpaque:NO];
[mask drawInRect:self.bounds
fromRect:(NSRect){{0, 0},mask.size}
operation:NSCompositeCopy
fraction:1.0];
}
@end
The primary limitation of this technique is that the standard drop shadow doesn’t interact very well with alpha-blended edges.
I found this code in my experiments folder from earlier this year. I can't remember how much of this I wrote and how much is based on examples from elsewhere in the Internet.
This example will display a partially-transparent blue window with a fully opaque GTK+ button in the centre. Drawing, for example, an alpha-blended PNG somewhere inside the window should result in it being composited correctly. Hopefully this will put you on the right track.
Compile it with the following:
$ gcc `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-2.0` -o per-pixel-opacity per-pixel-opacity.c
Now for the code:
#include <gtk/gtk.h>
static gboolean on_window_expose_event(GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventExpose *event, gpointer data)
{
cairo_t *cr;
cr = gdk_cairo_create(widget->window); // create cairo context
cairo_set_source_rgba(cr, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.2);
cairo_set_operator(cr, CAIRO_OPERATOR_SOURCE); // set drawing compositing operator
// SOURCE -> replace destination
cairo_paint(cr); // paint source
cairo_destroy(cr);
return FALSE;
}
gint main(gint argc, gchar **argv)
{
GtkWidget *window, *button, *vbox;
GdkScreen *screen;
GdkColormap *colormap;
gtk_init(&argc, &argv);
window = gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
g_signal_connect(G_OBJECT(window), "delete-event", gtk_main_quit, NULL);
g_signal_connect(G_OBJECT(window), "expose-event", G_CALLBACK(on_window_expose_event), NULL);
gtk_window_set_decorated(GTK_WINDOW(window), FALSE);
gtk_container_set_border_width(GTK_CONTAINER(window), 20);
gtk_widget_set_app_paintable(window, TRUE);
screen = gtk_widget_get_screen(window);
colormap = gdk_screen_get_rgba_colormap(screen);
gtk_widget_set_colormap(window, colormap);
button = gtk_button_new();
gtk_button_set_label(GTK_BUTTON(button), "Don't Press!");
gtk_container_add(GTK_CONTAINER(window), GTK_WIDGET(button));
gtk_widget_show_all(window);
gtk_main();
return 0;
}