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KDE Tray Icons Have White Background [solved]


Edd
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I've seen this happen to me, particularly GTK apps like GAIM. If you log out and log back in, the colours are usually fine again. It's only when you change from one colour scheme to another, that you get the white background, or grey or whatever colour was there previously.

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Have a look in Configure Your Desktop, Look and Feel, Panels.

 

Under here, I see a load of settings in Appearance, that might be OK with a bit of tweaking. I use 10.1 OE, and the settings I have are:

 

K Menu - Custom

Applications - Default

Desktop Access - Default

Quickbrowser Menus - Default

Window List - Default

Non KDE apps - Default

 

It might just be a config issue somewhere which is preventing it from returning back. The Non KDE apps one stands out to me here, but I might be wrong. Another thing might be to go through the colour settings, find if one is white, and change it to see if it reflects the change under the gaim icon.

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i guess you can't do anything about it right now. (unless you are willig to hack your kde quite a lot) from what i see, the problem is caused by some pixmaps that do not support real tranparency (i think those images shown in your screenie are xpm files) and i don't know if the xpm files can be replaced with e.g. png files without causing a problem in kicker. you might have to find it out by yourself.

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the problem is caused by some pixmaps that do not support real tranparency (i think those images shown in your screenie are xpm files)

 

Arctic,

 

I have managed to identify the pixmaps that 'appear' to be causing the problem. The one's relevant to me are png's, which includes the network icon Edd refers to in his original post. I have noticed that these images display as transparent in gnome. Could you please clarify as to what you mean by 'real' transparency, not quite sure what you are meaning by that!

 

Cheers,

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boy, this is a damn hard task, but i will try to explain it ...

 

first of all, not every image file type is able to support real (=100%) transparency. this is because they do not allow adjusting of alpha channels or because their basic coding type allows e.g. only 8-bit images.

 

then there are sub-standards for some graphic formats which need to be taken into account. a standard gif file e.g. does not support transparency, but the gif89a format does so. this means that there are several sub-options when creating graphics and you need to customize some settings.

 

then there is compression. some file formats can compress images better than others. .png files can e.g. compress files quite well without loosing the alpha channel and thus the transparency option. jpgs will loose the transparency option once they are saved because their higher compression grade somehow kills that option.

 

the pixmaps that are used in the x-area are afaik only 8-bit images and this is why they loose some of their transparency i guess. that means the transparency will only work well in a certain graphical surrounding. as gnome and kde usually work with 16 bit graphics, the transparency factor of the 8-bit image might get lost.

 

sounds weird, eh? the best thing would be to buy a book on that topic. :D

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Have a look in Configure Panel ------->Appearance (right click on panel) and look at QuickBrowser menus and see if it is set to default which I think it should be. It maybe on another setting. The colour shown should be a neutral colour (kind of beige). Applications perhaps should be on default as well. This is the area that determines colours or lack of colours under the Panel Icons.

 

Cheers. John.

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Ok,

 

Here's what I found!

 

The issue is due to the fact that the programs concenred are GTK2. Now even though KDE gives you the option to force KDE colours on GTK app's, this is limited to the windows only. The taskbar is in a way independent from the windows in terms of formatting. If you do not select a background image or transparency then the taskbar takes on the window colours, which KDE does set, and uses for GTK apps in ~/.KDE/gtkrc; your GTK icons in the system tray should be ttransparent. However the gtkrc file does not set the properties specifically for the taskbar, ergo when you apply a background image or transparency, it does not apply the settings to the gtkrc file (this is because the gtkrc file is set under colour schemes, not panel settings)! You could of course edit the gtkrc file manually to accomodate this, but AFAIK that will get overwritten the minute you change your colour scheme. Similarly, even when you set the taskbar with no background image or transparency (i.e. using the color scheme set under colours), it can sometimes be a hit or a miss as to whether you get the transparent icons.

 

A bit of a pain I know, but I just removed these items from the system tray, I don't have any personal need to monitor my Network connection, never use that tool really, and I see no need for the Msndriva online tool as I check this place almost every day........

 

Depends on your functional needs I suppose!

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I just had a look at EDDS original post again and then realized what he was really on about.

The two mini icons that he complains about the beige background cannot have a transparent or coloured background because the background is part of the actual icon and not seperate to it. i.e. it is a complete icon image.

So all talk of changing it can only be achieved by modifying the actual icon itself. Try editing the icon yourself if you do not like the way it looks, Personally it doesn´t bother me one bit, there are more important things to worry about.

 

Cheers. John

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I just had a look at EDDS original post again and then realized what he was really on about.

The two mini icons that he complains about the beige background cannot have a transparent or coloured background because the background is part of the actual icon and not seperate to it. i.e. it is a complete icon image.

So all talk of changing it can only be achieved by modifying the actual icon itself. Try editing the icon yourself if you do not like the way it looks, Personally it doesn´t bother me one bit, there are more important things to worry about.

John,

 

The icons already have a transparent layer, anyone using gnome will be able to appreciate that the problem isn't the icons themselves, but the way kde sets GTK2 colours for use in KDE.

 

Cheers

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In case anyone was wondering, I fixed the problem to a degree. Fixed meaning i changed the program i was using. I switched from gaim to Kopete and have found Kopete to be superior to Gaim for my needs as well as having a non-opaque icon. For the net monitor, I installed knemo that was in my urpmi repositories and is actually much better than the default monitor and has a tray icon that displays nicely.

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