Would it be possible to add an option to make a panel (or a widget) transparent? For those who want a dock, it would be an easy solution: Icontasks+transparent panel+spacers.
An usecase for a widget would be, for example, folder view with a transparent background. You get the benefits of the widget without having a big colored square on your screen. The idea would be to be able to mix and match. I might like my plasma theme, but find that a widget draws too much attention. Or if you want to imitate a mac setup (for whatever reason) you might want a normal panel on top and a transparent one at the bottom.

pedrorodriguez wrote:Would it be possible to add an option to make a panel (or a widget) transparent?

This is already possible if not particularly implemented the way you think. A panel can be transparent (or any other widget) if the SVG/SVGZ file used for its background is transparent or missing. This however has one peculiar problem and is that if you have blur enabled the area behind the widget will get blurred. If you turn it off then you have a truly transparent widget.

pedrorodriguez wrote: An usecase for a widget would be, for example, folder view with a transparent background. You get the benefits of the widget without having a big colored square on your screen. The idea would be to be able to mix and match. I might like my plasma theme, but find that a widget draws too much attention. Or if you want to imitate a mac setup (for whatever reason) you might want a normal panel on top and a transparent one at the bottom.

But while it's possible to have a solid colored panel and transparent widgets that way it will work only if you use widgets that will be placed on the desktop. Because then if you use a widget on a panel like Kicker it will be transparent too. Not very appealing or useful.

Uri_Herrera wrote: This is already possible if not particularly implemented the way you think. A panel can be transparent (or any other widget) if the SVG/SVGZ file used for its background is transparent or missing. This however has one peculiar problem and is that if you have blur enabled the area behind the widget will get blurred. If you turn it off then you have a truly transparent widget.

I see. It's sort of all or nothing at the moment, right? Also, you probably can't turn the blur off just for one panel, can you?

Uri_Herrera wrote: But while it's possible to have a solid colored panel and transparent widgets that way it will work only if you use widgets that will be placed on the desktop. Because then if you use a widget on a panel like Kicker it will be transparent too. Not very appealing or useful.

Yes, I was thinking about them on the desktop. I personaly don't use any besides the analog clock, because I don't like having my desktop full of solid color rectangles. If I could make the background transparent for say folder view and a few others things would be different.

No you turn it off for the entire desktop.

Widgets share the same resources so making one transparent means making all of them transparent. I don't know but I suppose is possible that widgets can set their own background independent of the plasma theme. Though that would brake their own integration (visually) if they decided to ignore the plasma theme.

I see. Yeah, probably letting widgets do this would break consistency and is more trouble than is worth. If a transparent panel is not a good solution, are there any other plans to have a dock? They are very popular, but we don't have any native solution.

While not a dock in the same sense as the OS X dock or Plank, Docky, AWM, you can place a panel, shrink it, center it and use the icons only tasks manager. There was a dock software on kde-look or qt-apps.org not sure but I don't know if the dev. has discontinued it or will want to port it to KF5.

Uri_Herrera wrote:[quote="
A panel can be transparent (or any other widget) if the SVG/SVGZ file used for its background is transparent or missing.

That is the option I would like to apply to my desktop.

Would you, please point me the exact location of those svg files to rename (remove) to get the complet widget transparency?
Also the place to remove mentioned blur effect.
I am using Breeze Dark Theme.

Thank you in advance.

That would be very useful if such a choice existed...

I am trying to create a task plasmoid which acts as plank or mac style...
and the process is going quite fine actually....

to test it I use "MX Theme" from kde-look which is fully transparent
and I have disabled blurrring,
The Blur effect can be found through System Settings, Workspace Behavior,
to the Desktop Effects used.

A workaround even with the current Breeze implementation is that in
plasma themes is supported different layouts for each panel based on its position.
So I think it could be possible to create a Breeze - Dark theme that only the
bottom panel is transparent and everything else remains as it is. I tried to
reach the VDG to test this but I didnt have any response yet

Thank you for your kind piece of advice. I will give a try.

I knocked together a transparent Breeze theme - shortly after switching to Plasma 5 (I hate opaque widgets with a vengeance )... It's pretty easy - just fire up Inkscape and edit the svg files building blocks for the Breeze theme...

I might have a crack at writing a script to do it... Naturally I worry about theme breakage, between Plasma releases, and also it would allow one to tune the level of transparency... Seeing as how svg files are just text files.

rwalker wrote:I might have a crack at writing a script to do it... Naturally I worry about theme breakage, between Plasma releases, and also it would allow one to tune the level of transparency... Seeing as how svg files are just text files.

I would be magic, for me.... for example setting the level of transparency for the different positioned panels. It would be even useful to me a Breeeze Dark theme that has fully tranparent the west panel... this is my system's case and it would gave me a hint about how the svg file of the panels was edited to achieve this...

psifidotos wrote:I would be magic, for me.... for example setting the level of transparency for the different positioned panels. It would be even useful to me a Breeeze Dark theme that has fully transparent the west panel... this is my system's case and it would gave me a hint about how the svg file of the panels was edited to achieve this...

I'll have a look. A thought of sed or awk script hack would probably be least subject to breakage between theme updates... Just don't expect this in a hurry!! I'm really busy down the allotment at this time of year

If you try editing the theme yourself... You really have to use Inkscape and break the meta objects apart to set the transparency of each unit part... Then re-group each widget component together - restoring the original object label (this is how Plasma / KDE picks up what object is what - from these labels). It's pretty easy - just rather time consuming...

So hence my plan to try and diff the edited parts, against the originals, and try to automate the process

Bob

rwalker wrote:

psifidotos wrote:I would be magic, for me.... for example setting the level of transparency for the different positioned panels. It would be even useful to me a Breeeze Dark theme that has fully transparent the west panel... this is my system's case and it would gave me a hint about how the svg file of the panels was edited to achieve this...

I'll have a look. A thought of sed or awk script hack would probably be least subject to breakage between theme updates... Just don't expect this in a hurry!! I'm really busy down the allotment at this time of year

Thanks Bob... not in a hurry at all...

Michail

psifidotos wrote:Thanks Bob... not in a hurry at all...

Michail

Actually... Having poked around in the svg files... They are a lot simpler than I remembered... Plus gzip and gunzip can be used to batch convert between svg and svgz formats very easily.

I reckon I can write a simple awk script that will read in a configuration file and then use that to set the fill-opacity of all the specified id tags in a widget. I just happen to be an awk master - which is handy

I will keep you posted how I get on!!

Bob

rwalker wrote:I will keep you posted how I get on!!

Bob

Bob here is the announcement of my new plasmoid and why I need
this transparent panel... I would prefer to use Breeze-Dark Theme with just one panel
transparent but I am using MX Theme until such a choice exists...

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For anyone that wants to give this plasmoid a go and send me feedback,
the first version is online and can be downloaded from inside Plasma (>=5.7).

I have called it "Now Dock"

the kde-look link if you want to download it yourself: https://www.kde-look.org/p/1151047/

have fun everyone...
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