First post from MorphOS 2.3 / OWB 1.4

i was wondering, is compiz fusion/beryl available on morphos 2.3? youtube has videos of it using compiz fusion/beryl right? but is that just a technology show?

[ Edited by zhulien on 2009/8/14 13:57 ]

youtube has videos of it using compiz fusion/beryl right?

I don't know which YT movie do you mean, but no, MorphOS has no Compiz/Beryl. Maybe you just have seen Linux running on Efika, or you have seen demonstration of Lucy (adds transparency effects to windows) or SCube (screen switcher placing them on a cube).

@ Jambalah

How did you get this nice border at the screen? with weather and icns etc?

X

@xzit: its statline + wetter.

krashan wrote:

..."Lucy (adds transparency effects to windows)"


Do you not agree that GUI/window transparency should actually be handled and displayed by the OS, independent of applications so it can be system-wide and working in a system compliant and friendly way with all apps? Why is a 3rd party utility needed to enable this on MorphOS? Or am I wrong? Should there not be somewhere in the System Preferences to enable window transparency and configure the settings? Perhaps in the new "Enhanced Display Engine" prefs?

@ Xzit:

As Sadddam wrote, is statline + wetter =)
The first one as backdrop and extended to fit screen wide. The second one on it.
With same background.

Hi!

If you want to take a look to this image....

The Green Glass Skin

The skin is finished... Now let's go and realise a different colour version ...

And if you want to download:

Download skin

Thanks to Papiosaur, meta-morphos webmaster, for his courtesy and hospitality!

I hope you enjoy!!!

@HammerD

Quote:

Lucy doesn't handle transparency itself. Transparency attribute is really handled by the OS. Lucy basically just sets this attribute depending on events (active/inactive/whatever). So it's as compliant as it could be (if it doesn't do something nasty there, of course :)).
Now, that these events could be configurable directly from system preferences is another thing, but that doesn't mean lucy is an alien patch either. It just uses new abilities offered by the system.

@Fab

Ok...well I think it would make sense to be able to enable it from the OS itself...either through system preferences or an official commodity app or something...you want to show off that "eye candy" out of the box :)

The transparency was designed as something for the programmers to use for their apps, not as something to be applied by someone else on their apps. While Lucy might be fun for some, from my pov it's a usability disaster. I see no place for something like Lucy in the OS itself and I certainly would never make anything like that an OS default.

@jacadcaps

Fair enough, it's just a different approach to enable transparency. Leaving it up to the programmer to decide, rather than having the user decide via a system preferences option.

Personally as a user I find it frustrating. I know the OS supports transparency, but I as a user cannot enable it. I have to rely on a 3rd party application to do it. In Windows, MacOS, and OS4 it is enabled via system preferences or control panel or display setting which from a user perspective I think is the right way to do it.

Er, where in Windows or MacOS do you enable things like Lucy does? Sure, on Windows you can enable a compositing engine (which is the equivalent of '3dlayers' aka Enhanced Display of MorphOS), but that only lets you use a skin with some transparency effect. The rest is up to the application programmers. On OSX you don't even really get to pick the skin, the display is always composited and you cannot turn that off.

And BTW, MorphOS supports half-transparent skins since 2.2. It's just that there are no skins using that at the moment.

There is software for Windows which uses halftransparency effect for inactive window. Paint.NET is one of them. While it sometimes is neat (I can see what is underneath windows) sometimes I can not read anything unless i reactivate that window.

Transparency in MorphOS menus is another usability disaster...

@jacadcaps

In Windows 7:

Advanced System Settings -> Settings (under Performance) -> uncheck "Enable transparent glass"

-That will disable start menu/bar transparency and transparency around windows (effectively disables transparency totally)

In MacOS, (seems you can only partially disable transparency out of the box, oops)

Open System Preferences -> Open Desktop & Screen Saver under the Personal section ->Uncheck the box for Translucent Menu Bar.

-Only disables transparency on the menu bar

In AmigaOS 4.1:

Prefs -> GUI

Under the "Window Transparency" section there are three sliders to control the window transparency:

-Active Window (slide from 0% to 100%)
-Inactive Window (slide from 0% to 100%)
-Dragged Window (slide from 0% to 100%)

For Linux (various Window Managers), see this website:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/X.Org/Transparency

-With most Window managers you can enable and disable transparency fairly easily.

@HammerD:

My point was: there's no place for things like that in the system. In Windows or OSX you don't really get to tune these things, some are only there because of performance issues. And you just mentioned yourself that they only let you change things independent from applications and inner parts of their windows - which is exactly what MorphOS lets you do as well, via its skins system.

Quote:
Too bad it seems to only work when you are moving pointer with mouse

@jaca

ok fine, it's the MorphOS devs decision on how you implement it, not mine....let me just say I don't think it operates as nicely for the user as with AmigaOS4.1, where you can adjust it and it "just works". ;). IMHO, OS 4.1 has a nice implementation of how the transparency works. Even with Windows 7 you can turn it off totally and keep the exact same skin.

As it stands now I don't use Lucy (I had other problems with it, and it was a bit slow) and therefore I have no transparency in MorphOS, which is too bad, as I like the eye-candy. I do have some drop shadow effect on the windows in my current skin but that is all.

BTW, I have PEG-2/G4 with Radeon 9000/128MB and a mac mini 1.5GHz waiting for mac mini version...

Installed the update and all works well.
Openening the system settings seems to be much slower then mos 2.2
There already was some delay in mos 2.2 but this has extended with the new mos 2.3
Or is something troubling my system?
Well doesn't really matter like my machine peg2 more and more.

I moved house in October last year and only got my Efika back out again this week, and then immediately updated to 2.3 and all I can say is that I'm really impressed!!

I hadn't used OWB before and now that I have that working, I can really see myself using my Efika on a regular basis.

Sound still doesn't seem right though, thought that might have improved since 2.1 (last version I was running)?

I have one question about NTFS support. At the moment we have only possibility to read NTFS disks. Do you think about full support of that format in future releases?

After moving house, I have my Pegasos I April 2 ready to try this promising 2.3 release. Booting from CD is fine, I think is much more faster than previous releases. But then, right after selecting the country and language, I press the OK button and the system freezes.
Any help? I''ve red here that there are some "newish" boot parameters that I might try. Previous 2.2 release worked wonderfully.
I have a further problem: I prepared a native screen mode of 1680 x 1050 with this paremetters, thanks to MarK's invaluable help:

Horizontal timing:
- Resolution: 1680.
- Sync Length: 520.
- Pulse Offset: 200.
- Pulse Length: 104.
- Polarity: Negative.
- (Frequency [kHz]: 68.1818).

Vertical timing:
- Resolution: 1050.
- Sync Length: 40.
- Sync Offset: 0:
- Pulse Length: 16.
- Polarity: Negative.
- (Frequency [Hz]: 62.5521).

I finally bought the DVI to HDMI adapter that some of you suggested here, and not the SmartFirmware screen does show up (it didn't with the VGA cable). Now, this 1680 x 1050 screen mode is not displayed at all through DVI (the monitor says "invalid mode"?!), only with VGA. Puzzling...