Xfce4-panel transparent with opaque text/icons

Question

I'm trying to achieve panel transparency with opaque text/icons, I googled around and eventually found a few helpful posts. I'm trying to use the patch guide posted in this topic a few years back:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=71248
when I try to makepkg, "xfce4-panel-4.6.1.tar.bz2" doesn't pass a validity check for the md5sums. Is this patch even up to date? If it isnt where can I find a more up to date one because so far I've been unsuccessful in that regard.
Also, I assume that patching is still the only option for achieving this transparency effect in xfce4 or has something new been developed?

Answer 1

Sorry about my last post. I just thought that if you couldn't get it to work with opaque icons, then you wanted the next best thing. Anyway, maybe it is because the patch is for xfce 4.6.1 .
methuselah wrote:
wankel wrote:
heres the cairo patch for the new panel:
http://www.cooptel.qc.ca/~pggervais/xfc … tch.tar.gz
can anyone give me a step by step on how to apply this patch to my panel?
This is how I patched mine:
place the new 4.6.1 patch, this PKGBUILD, and the xfce4-panel.install files in a folder called ~/xfce4-panel-build:
PKGBUILD file:
# $Id: PKGBUILD 36266 2009-04-20 20:58:18Z andyrtr $
# Maintainer: tobias <tobias funnychar archlinux.org>
pkgname=xfce4-panel
pkgver=4.6.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Panel for the Xfce desktop environment"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
license=('GPL2')
url="http://www.xfce.org/"
groups=('xfce4')
depends=("libxfcegui4>=$pkgver" 'exo>=0.3.101' 'libwnck' 'hicolor-icon-theme')
makedepends=('pkgconfig' "xfconf>=$pkgver" 'intltool')
options=('!libtool')
install=${pkgname}.install
source=(http://www.xfce.org/archive/xfce-${pkgver}/src/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.bz2
xfce4-panel-4.6.1.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('73a366b9892152266b465d7d9c35bef4'
'7078dba125570fd952de63a78c477d1c')
build() {
cd ${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}
patch -Np0 -i /home/"your-name"/xfce4-panel-build/xfce4-panel-4.6.1_cairo.patch
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib \
--localstatedir=/var --disable-static
make || return 1
make DESTDIR=${pkgdir} install || return 1
xfce4-panel.install file:
post_install() {
gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f usr/share/icons/hicolor
post_upgrade() {
post_install $1
post_remove() {
gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f usr/share/icons/hicolor
then in the xfce4-panel-build folder run this in a terminal:
makepkg -c
I think this should work for you. Then all you have to do is install it using pacman -U, and then restart the panel using these 2 commands in alt+f2 run program:
killall xfce4-panel
then:
xfce4-panel &
Try changing everything that says xfce 4.6.1 to 4.6.2 because xfce4-session is 4.6.2 . Or maybe change it to 4.6.4 which is the version of the panel. I don't know what to do about the md5sum error. Delete the line maybe? If you are sure it downloaded correctly. Hope that helps.
Last edited by Tux the penguin (2010-11-21 20:14:47)