Compton

Compton is a compositor for X, and a fork of xcompmgr-dana.

I was frustrated by the low amount of standalone lightweight compositors. Compton was forked from Dana Jansens' fork of xcompmgr and refactored. I fixed whatever bug I found, and added features I wanted. Things seem stable, but don't quote me on it. I will most likely be actively working on this until I get the features I want. This is also a learning experience for me. That is, I'm partially doing this out of a desire to learn Xlib.

Changes from xcompmgr:

• inactive window transparency (specified with -i)
• titlebar/frame transparency (specified with -e)
• menu transparency (thanks to Dana)
• shadows are now enabled for argb windows, e.g. terminals with transparency
• removed serverside shadows (and simple compositing) to clean the code, the only option that remains is clientside shadows
• configuration files (specified with --config)
• colored shadows (with --shadow-[red/green/blue] value)
• a new fade system
• vsync (still under development)
• several more options

Fixes from the original xcompmgr:

• fixed a segfault when opening certain window types
• fixed a memory leak caused by not freeing up shadows (from the freedesktop repo)
• fixed the conflict with chromium and similar windows
• many more

Building

Dependencies:

B for build-time

R for runtime

• libx11 (B,R)
• libxcomposite (B,R)
• libxdamage (B,R)
• libxfixes (B,R)
• libXext (B,R)
• libxrender (B,R)
• libXrandr (B,R)
• pkg-config (B)
• make (B)
• xproto / x11proto (B)
• bash (R)
• xprop,xwininfo / x11-utils (R)
• libpcre (B,R) (Will probably be made optional soon)
• libconfig (B,R) (Will probably be made optional soon)
• libdrm (B) (Will probably be made optional soon)
• libGL (B,R) (Will probably be made optional soon)
• asciidoc (B) (if you wish to run make docs)

How to build

To build, make sure you have the dependencies above:

# Make the main program
$ make
# Make the newer man pages
$ make docs
# Install
$ make install

(Compton does include a _CMakeLists.txt in the tree, but we haven't decided whether we should switch to CMake yet. The Makefile is fully usable right now.)

Example Usage

$ compton -cC -i 0.6 -e 0.6 -f
$ compton --config ~/compton.conf

Options and Configuration

compton [-d display] [-r radius] [-o opacity]
        [-l left-offset] [-t top-offset]
        [-i opacity] [-e opacity] [-cCfFSdG]
        [--config path] [--shadow-red value]
        [--shadow-green value] [--shadow-blue value]
        [--inactive-opacity-override] [--inactive-dim value]
        [--mark-wmwin-focused] [--shadow-exclude condition]
        [--mark-ovredir-focused] [--no-fading-openclose]
        [--shadow-ignore-shaped] [--detect-round-corners]

• -d display: Which display should be managed.
• -r radius: The blur radius for shadows. (default 12)
• -o opacity: The translucency for shadows. (default .75)
• -l left-offset: The left offset for shadows. (default -15)
• -t top-offset: The top offset for shadows. (default -15)
• -I fade-in-step: Opacity change between steps while fading in. (default 0.028)
• -O fade-out-step: Opacity change between steps while fading out. (default 0.03)
• -D fade-delta-time: The time between steps in a fade in milliseconds. (default 10)
• -m opacity: The opacity for menus. (default 1.0)
• -c: Enabled client-side shadows on windows.
• -C: Avoid drawing shadows on dock/panel windows.
• -z: Zero the part of the shadow's mask behind the window (experimental).
• -f: Fade windows in/out when opening/closing and when opacity changes, unless --no-fading-openclose is used.
• -F: Equals -f. Deprecated.
• -i opacity: Opacity of inactive windows. (0.1 - 1.0)
• -e opacity: Opacity of window titlebars and borders. (0.1 - 1.0)
• -G: Don't draw shadows on DND windows
• -b: Daemonize/background process.
• -S: Enable synchronous operation (for debugging).
• --config path: Look for configuration file at the path.
• --shadow-red value: Red color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
• --shadow-green value: Green color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
• --shadow-blue value: Blue color value of shadow (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0).
• --inactive-opacity-override: Inactive opacity set by -i overrides value of _NET_WM_OPACITY.
• --inactive-dim value: Dim inactive windows. (0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0)
• --mark-wmwin-focused: Try to detect WM windows and mark them as active.
• --shadow-exclude condition: Exclude conditions for shadows.
• --mark-ovredir-focused: Mark over-redirect windows as active.
• --no-fading-openclose: Do not fade on window open/close.
• --shadow-ignore-shaped: Do not paint shadows on shaped windows.
• --detect-rounded-corners: Try to detect windows with rounded corners and don't consider them shaped windows.

Format of a condition:

condition = <target>:<type>[<flags>]:<pattern>

<target> is one of "n" (window name), "i" (window class instance), and "g" (window general class)

<type> is one of "e" (exact match), "a" (match anywhere), "s" (match from start), "w" (wildcard), and "p" (PCRE regular expressions, if compiled with the support).

<flags> could be a series of flags. Currently the only defined flag is "i" (ignore case).

<pattern> is the actual pattern string.

Configuration

A more robust sample configuration file is available in the repository.

Example

~/compton.conf:

# Shadows
shadow = true;

# Opacity
inactive-opacity = 0.8;
frame-opacity = 0.7;

# Fades
fading = true;

Run with:

$ compton --config ~/compton.conf

License

Although compton has kind of taken on a life of its own, it was originally an xcompmgr fork. xcompmgr has gotten around. As far as I can tell, the lineage for this particular tree is something like:

• Keith Packard (original author)
• Matthew Hawn
• ...
• Dana Jansens
• chjj and richardgv

Not counting the tens of people who forked it in between.

See LICENSE for more info.