
How to make the Atom editor transparent - transcranial
https://github.com/transcranial/atom-transparency
======
juandazapata
Meanwhile, I'll seat here, wishing for an update that won't make the editor
eat almost 2GB of RAM after opening 3 text files :(

~~~
AlexMax
I remember seeing a similar complaint in the 1.4 release thread complaining
about memory usage, and when I compared my own Atom memory usage with a
project with about a half-dozen files open and it wasn't anyhere close to
that.

Wonder what's going on.

~~~
isaiahg
Same here, I use Atom for all my projects. Sometimes with > 10 files open at
once. I've never seen it get anywhere that bad.

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xpaulbettsx
This will break so much stuff, like you know, being able to click on things or
move tabs around. Or minimize / zoom the window. It's possible to get it to
work, but there are a lot of Difficulties, here's a similar PR

[https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/10208](https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/10208)

~~~
tokenizerrr
Transparency doesn't necessarily mean being able to click through it.

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nanook
Can someone help me understand how this would be useful?

~~~
Ciantic
Cause at certain age, all geeks go through their Window Blinds period, that's
when they keep changing the windowing theme, maybe tweaking the shell. Many
find it silly if not a buggy after a while, and years later wonder, why are
people still doing this?

~~~
spilk
I call this 'enlightenment', because I reached it after spending way too many
hours in my teens tweaking my Enlightenment window manager config rather than
doing something useful.

~~~
jfarmer
Never go full E17.

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eldog_
As an addition, you can make any window translucent/transparent in X11
(running with a composite manager) using transset-df, e.g.,

    
    
      # Lets you click on a window and sets it's alpha to half
      $ transset-df 0.5
    

One usually gets annoyed with not being able to read their terminal properly
after a while though.

~~~
mintplant
Yes, this is different from native terminal implementations in that it makes
the entire window content transparent, including the text, vs just the
background.

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saidajigumi
On one hand, I get the desire for transparency, having sought after it for
many years, esp. back when it was a rarefied commodity. But these days I find
I'm mostly only in favor of either fully opaque windows or transparency that's
darn near fully opaque. Just enough transparency to hint that there's
something tucked behind a full- or half- screen window. I find that it's too
just easy to compromise contrast and readability in editor windows.

~~~
userbinator
I find that transparency is most useful on small screens where you don't want
to put windows side-by-side but still want to see both; e.g. I'd have
documentation in a lower window and put my editor on top with transparency.
Occasionally I'd have 3 or even 4 windows in a transparency stack, but it gets
increasingly harder to read with more layers.

Here's a small utility for Windows that should be able to adjust transparency
of any window, including Atom (I haven't tried but it's worked on most every
other window):

[http://www.vanmiddlesworth.org/vitrite/](http://www.vanmiddlesworth.org/vitrite/)

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MCRed
I really would like to embedded atom as an online code editor... it seems like
a no brainer given that its written in Javascript. But it seems there's no
project to do this (hope I'm wrong!)

FWIW, I could never find any indication of an interest in this on the atom.io
site, and googling "embed atom" and the like produce a lot of pages about
Intels Atom CPU.

~~~
accommodavid
just because it's all javascript, doesn't mean you can "just" make a web
client. electron, the shell atom is built on, has a lot of functions that are
tied directly to the operating system and atom relies heavily on them. it also
has a module system that allows you to do require() in front end javascript
without needing to bundle anything. it would definitely be an interesting
project, though.

~~~
throwaway999888
So it is 1. built on top of heavy heavy Web technology 2. very much tied to
the OS. The worst of both worlds...

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wz1000
Isn't this something you would generally want your WM/Compositor to handle?

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bhouston
Couldn't this be an Atom add on? Isn't that there purposes?

~~~
shocks
I think the point is that Atom needs to be recompiled with certain options to
make this possible. You couldn't do it with a package.

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fuzzythinker
Any way to do this in sublimetext? The only search result is for Windows.

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Animats
You mean "translucent". If it was transparent, you wouldn't be able to read
the text.

(Besides, translucent GUIs are out. That's Vista/Win7.)

~~~
ino
Looking at the screenshot, the background isn't blurred so it's not
translucent.

It has transparency, or it is semi-transparent.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency)

(you are right about win7 having translucid windows)

~~~
mintplant
Funny, in grade school I remember being taught that "translucent" meant
anything in between full opacity and full transparency.

