wbar sometime gets "garbled"

[florian]

Hi, This is as discussed on #tinycorelinux channel with ^thehatsrule^ and others:

Not a critical issue, but anyway...
The background of the wbar section gets corrupted with the image of what was on top of it when it gets restarted. In particular this can happen when a new extension gets loaded (presumably wbar gets restarted then in order to display extra icons potentially included in the newly loaded extension)

A manual workaround is to make sure no window is overlapping with it and then restart the wbar.

[tobiaus]

does killall wbar && wbar -above-desk make any difference?

[roberts]

I have a menu item to restart wbar. Just move the overlapping window and select the Restart Wbar from the menu.

[tobiaus]

the /usr/bin/wbar.sh script that's called by the menu is:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
if [ $(awk '/icons:/{print $2}' "$HOME"/.desktop) == wbar ]; then
   WBARPID=$(pidof wbar)
   [ -n "$WBARPID" ] && killall wbar
   wbar -zoomf 1 -nanim 1 -bpress &
fi   

if you change line 5 to:

Code: [Select]

wbar -zoomf 1 -nanim 1 -above-desk -bpress &
(adding -above-desk) does that prevent the bug?

[^thehatsrule^]

iirc it doesn't affect it, because this is a problem with the transparency background.  And that flag is for something else (no affect in default TC).

[tobiaus]

i am pleased to mention the following.

first, how to (probably) avoid this in the first place: do not have a window over the bottom of the screen when you install a tce or tcz. second: the easiest way to refresh wbar: right click. even if you changed the number of icons.

[curaga]

Just found out this also happens in the better circles:

http://lwn.net/Articles/317841/

If using gnome-panel as transparent, and on-top, it will cover the window with your wallpaper. Just like wbar, but with 10x the ram usage. Plus no zoom

[baz]

I am experiencing the same problem, but I think a lot more frequently. Almost every window that I drag over wbar will cause it to reflect a garbled copy of the portion of the window that interacted with it. Right-clicking on wbar to reset it corrects it, but it happens with almost every window. My wbar is set to to be transparent, over other windows and above desktop.

I have tried the workarounds mentioned in this post but they don't help.

I am on an EEEPC 901 with 915resolution.tce and graphics-2.6.26.tcem installed.

Could it be drivers for my machine?

Also to note, there are some tiny artifacts that appear when I interact with wbar and it animates.

[jur]

Don't set wbar to always-ontop.

[baz]

Thanks for replying, but sadly that doesn't help. Plus I want it on top!

[jur]

The problem lies with how wbar is written... it is not a real transparent action, rather it takes a snapshot of whatever happens to be in the area of its animation extents and uses that as a background. This makes it appear like a transparent background. Until you move the background, that is. And if the background is a window, well then you're out of luck, because that 'background' changes when you move or close it or open another one.

[Lee]

Also to note, there are some tiny artifacts that appear when I interact with wbar and it animates.

Are the tiny artifacts down around the icon labels?  If so, I think they are caused when the zooming action causes the label text of one icon to slop over into the area of the next.  Try a smaller font (maybe 8 instead of the default 11), less (or no) zooming or shorter labels.  I do all of these things, just out of preference, and I don't get the little letter fragments.

[jur]

Or ditch the icon labels altogether - that's what icons are for, for telling you what the app is. Add '-nofont' in .wbar.

[baz]

Jur, your explanation makes a lot of sense, I see exactly what you're talking about now. Am I experiencing this because my netbook is having trouble keeping up or is it like that for everyone?

Lee, reducing the zoom to 1.3 is not only more aesthetically pleasing but solved the artifacts., thanks!

[dentonlt]

baz - yep, I get a bit of 'slop' on occasion, also ...
but I also like jur's idea of ditching the labels!