Version: 2.1 (using Devel) Installed from: Compiled sources Compiler: gcc 4.2.3 OS: Linux If no Compositing manager was present when Konsole or Yakuake is started, transparency does not work even if one is started later. If a compositing manager was present at startup but disabled later, re-enabling compositing later also brings back transparency. Transparency should work whenever compositing is activated. I tested this with Compiz, Xcompmgr and Kwin.
Unfortunately I don't think I can fix this because Konsole has to use different X11 properties depending on whether a compositing manager is available or not and these have to be chosen before any windows are created. If Konsole tries to use the "compositing available" settings when there isn't a compositing manager then various unpleasant visual glitches appear such as garbage behind menus when opening them - you can see some of these if compositing is turned off while Konsole is running. If Konsole does the reverse then it cannot use compositing at all. Ultimately the only reason I can think of to turn compositing on or off frequently is problems with certain OpenGL applications - I'm fairly sure that a fix for that is in the pipeline lower down the graphics stack.
At least I don't see any Glitches in that case. What about adding command line switch, environment variable or option to force the compositing-friendly behaviour?
SVN commit 810442 by knight: Add a command-line option --force-transparency which enables support for transparency even if no compositing manager is running when Konsole is started. BUG: 162333 M +11 -4 main.cpp WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=810442