Unfocusable, always-on-top window

Xyem · 04-20-2009, 04:24 AM

I'm looking for a way of having a window, such as an xterm running top or a gnuplot graph, that is always on top, translucent and cannot be interacted with ( events go to the window beneath ).

I'm using Fluxbox at the moment but am open to using another window manager ( or xcompmgr if required ). Has anyone done or seen this and can help?

This would be really helpful so I'll be very surprised if it is "impossible"

Thanks

raskin · 04-21-2009, 02:50 PM

I do think that it is impossible, unfortunately. The main problem is that a window on top of all the other ones may be made to ignore mouse, but there is no out-of-the-box way to make it pass the mouse events to underlying windows. Maybe you could make (using xcompmgr or Compiz) all the windows transparent, specify that active window is 80% opaque and thenmake your chosen special window 100% opaque. Actual effect will be 80:20 mixing of your chosen window and active window.

Xyem · 04-22-2009, 02:13 AM

I'm only making a guess here, but I would imagine that X ( or the WM ) controls which window receives keyboard/mouse events. If that is right, it wouldn't be too hard to be able to pass it a list and say "If you try to give these windows any events, skip them and give them to the next one in the stack".
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in the lower levels of X input could shine a light here?

Thanks for your suggestion, it might be a workable idea, I'll give it a shot.