transparent fluxbox menu

[infiniphunk]

I must have done something stupid to fluxbox and now I'm not sure what to do to reverse it. I used to be able to change menu-alpha from 255 to whatever in order to make my menu transparent. I can change the value but it doesn't affect the menu. I've also noticed that now if I click AntiAlias it doesn't stay selected. It always reverts back to being not selected. Any ideas?

[ruwach]

wierd. Sounds like flux got screwed up somehow. Try to reinstall it. That should overwrite all the system files but not change your settings.
you can manually change the menu-alpha in the ~/.fluxbox/init file.
hope this helps

[infiniphunk]

Thanks for your response. Yeah I'm on holidays now so I think I'm actually gonna fully reinstall debian...:D

[Icarus]

Did you change in in the init or the theme? I forget what overrides what....

[infiniphunk]

No, I just did it in the menu itself, where at the bottom it says 255 and AntiAlias right above that. I realized that I had to allow myself -rw on ~/.fluxbox/init, so now I can click on AntiAlias and it stays that way. However that just makes the menu huge, and it still doesn't make the menu transparent. This just makes me realize I still need to figure out how fluxbox really works....
What happened was before I had been having some trouble setting themes, so I just copied /etc/X11/fluxbox/init and fluxbox-menu from the same to .fluxbox in my home dir, so that was why I had to change the permissions on those files. Arrgghh! (bangs head on desk)

Thanks.

[blobaugh]

I don't know if this applies to you or not, but not until I installed windowmaker did the transparency work right on my machine

[j79zlr]

That is because when you install WM it uses wmsetbg to set the background. You need Esetroot or wmsetbg to allow transparency.

[infiniphunk]

I always use fbsetbg for setting backgrounds. I think it is possible I messed up fluxbox by actually editing /etc/x11/fluxbox/init rather than just init in my home folder. I have been told not to change the former. Oh well. I'm reinstalling tonight after work anyway...
Thanks for the hints, you guys are great, as always.

[j79zlr]

fbsetbg is just uses one of the aforementioned apps to set the background, and yes you should change the init in your home folder, not the global one, but that is not causing your problem.

[psi42]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
I always use fbsetbg for setting backgrounds.

fbsetbg is actually just a shell script that invokes one of the following:

Esetroot
wmsetbg
feh
chbg
display
qiv
xv
xsri
xli
xsetbg

It allows you to use a similar set of arguments, and then translates them to what one of these programs can understand. Rather nice really.

~psi42

[blobaugh]

yeah mine used xsetroot when i ran fbsetbg, but using windowmaker is much nicer and it allows transparency as was mentioned earlier