[Bug]: No longer able to have background with 0.00 opacity

[steviator]

I have:

• Searched if this issue hasn't been reported yet.
• Verified that I am using the latest version

Install method used:

• AUR

Ever since installing a pre release test version of your plugin, I've been unable to change the background to be fully transparent. I now get this blurred strip with bizarre ugly corners if the background is enabled.

Nothing I do can make the background have 0.00 opacity like before.

[steviator]

Picture of weird strip of blur with corner weirdness....

[luisbocanegra]

If you disable the native panel background option does it do anything?

[steviator]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Yes. Disabling the background entirely still works.

Custom blur used to behave as I would expect from the description, where I could have sections of the panel background with 0 opacity have no blur, while having blur behind the widgets section. This allowed me to create "pseudo floating" blurred sections behind the widgets, which I can no longer do.

Now, when the panel background is enabled, but set to 0 opacity I get this strip of blur that is neither the shape of the panel, nor the shape of the widget background with bizarre looking "stepped" corners instead of rounded or square ones.

This happens regardless of the state of the custom blur checkbox.

[luisbocanegra]

Please try rebuilding the blur plugin if you haven't done so.

After that, reboot, create a new panel, add panel colorizer and load Blur Widget preset, if it doesn't look as intended please attach a screenshot

[luisbocanegra]

Instructions to build the blur plugin are here https://github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-panel-colorizer?tab=readme-ov-file#manually

[steviator]

Did the following...

rm -rf /usr/lib/qt6/qml/org/kde/plasma/panelcolorizer/
git clone https://github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-panel-colorizer
cd plasma-panel-colorizer
./install.sh

...rebooted, logged in again and created a new default panel (at the bottom in the screenshot), set the background to 0.00 opacity and got the following result:

[luisbocanegra]

If you didn't apply the "Blur widgets" preset (as per my request), what I see in your screenshot is working as intended.

If you read the small (i) messages Opacity tells you that setting it to 0.0 still leaves the blur and contrast effects that "blurred strip with bizarre ugly corners"

To make the blur follow the widgets instead you need to select Widgets option in Appearance > Element: and select Blur custom background, which is what the "Blur widgets" preset will do for you, whereas if you do it under the Panel element it is applied to the panel's custom background like in the "Dock" preset.

To fully get rid of the blur you just need to also uncheck "Native panel: Background" option, in fact, the "Transparent" built-in preset should do this if you apply it, if neither this or "Blur widgets" do what's shown in the previews then we have a valid bug.

[steviator]

I wasn't trying to get rid of the blur, but trying to make it work again. The results are the same whether the blur box is applied or not.

I'm obviously not being clear in what I'm saying. custom blur is the the thing that isn't working, ticking the custom blur box makes no difference to whether the blurred background appears or not. The blurred background is always present no matter what I do unless I explicitly disable the background. It used to work differently, and I was able to blur the background behind the widgets only, which I could do by setting turning on the custom blur box and setting background opacity to 0. That no longer works, and that is what I'm trying to restore.

Perhaps I'm confused and that was never intentional behavior, if not, what exactly is the purpose of the custom blur function, and can you add the functionality I describe that was accidentally present before?

At any rate, the plugin behavior has degraded even further for me now, and I'm unable to use the Preset Overrides function, applying the override settings no longer has any effect, and clicking the "Restore default" button crashes plasmashell but doesn't actually remove the configuration.

It seems to me that a hygiene problem, where your plugin is like a naughty child creating messes it doesn't know how to clean up, would explain both problems. How can I completely remove your plugin and undo everything that it modified returning my system to a state as if it had never seen your plugin before?

[luisbocanegra]

Well I told you to load the Blur widget preset and send me a screenshot of the results, you never confirmed you did that.

The custom blur not working is a symptom of the plugin needing a rebuild, that's just how things are when stuff that the plugin depends on (Qt in this case) get updated.

If the rebuild didn't help it could mean:

• wasn't build properly, maybe the install script showed some errors you didn't notice
• plasma is not picking it up for some reason, output of journalctl --user -xu plasma-plasmashell -b --no-pager > plasmashell.log could help if there is any error in the logs
• you are using it wrong, but manually applying blur widgets preset would have discarded this right away

Perhaps I'm confused and that was never intentional behavior, if not, what exactly is the purpose of the custom blur function, and can you add the functionality I describe that was accidentally present before?

Yes, that's the purpose of it, look a the preview image of the Blur widgets plugin, it's literally that.

At any rate, the plugin behavior has degraded even further for me now, and I'm unable to use the Preset Overrides function, applying the override settings no longer has any effect, and clicking the "Restore default" button crashes plasmashell but doesn't actually remove the configuration.

The configuration being broken it's probably caused by my failed attempts to migrate old configurations to a new format instead of requiring everyone to recreate them from scratch, but if you have a large set of overrides that could explain why it's not being applied and causing crashes.

Honestly best thing to do in those cases is to remove the widget from the panel, restart or logout, then add it the widget again if you want to keep using it.

It seems to me that a hygiene problem, where your plugin is like a naughty child creating messes it doesn't know how to clean up, would explain both problems. How can I completely remove your plugin and undo everything that it modified returning my system to a state as if it had never seen your plugin before?

I try my best to fix these kind of problems, it's just that sometimes things aren't that easy, after all this is nothing but a hack I did for me in my free time and decided to share with others...

How can I completely remove your plugin and undo everything that it modified returning my system to a state as if it had never seen your plugin before?

1. remove the widget from your panels
2. Log out or restart plasmashell (run systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell)
3. Uninstall the AUR package
4. remove all the files created by the install script (/usr ones are the same the package from the AUR installs):

sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/qt6/qml/org/kde/plasma/panelcolorizer/ /usr/share/metainfo/luisbocanegra.panel.colorizer.appdata.xml /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/luisbocanegra.panel.colorizer/ $HOME/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/luisbocanegra.panel.colorizer

[steviator]

After purging everything, would it be a good idea to avoid the AUR packages altogether? It seems like they may be part of the problem here. I'll take working-as-intended over convenient any day of the week.

[luisbocanegra]

After purging everything, would it be a good idea to avoid the AUR packages altogether? It seems like they may be part of the problem here. I'll take working-as-intended over convenient any day of the week.

If the custom blur doesn't work with the AUR package but installing from source does, that means you should rebuild the package rather than just reinstall it.

[kloplop-rgb]

I have the same problem with custom blur not working after a system update. It used to look like this:

and now it looks like this:

I tried rebuilding the C++ plugin like you've said in the description, but it didn't work. Uninstalling and reinstalling doesn't work, unless I don't know how to uninstall it "completely" or something.

[luisbocanegra]

Can't reproduce on my machine

@kloplop-rgb please do this:

1. Run journalctl --user -xu plasma-plasmashell -b --no-pager > plasmashell.log
2. In another terminal tab/window run systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell
3. Wait for the desktop to load
4. Stop the journalctl command and attach the plasmashell.log file
5. Attach the .json files of your preset and overrides Where are my presets/settings stored?
6. Output of kinfo command

[kloplop-rgb]

plasmashell.log

I don't have anything in presets (the folder is empty. $HOME/.config/panel-colorizer/presets/). There isn't an overrides.json in the parent folder at all.

kinfo:
Operating System: CachyOS Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.19.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.17.5-2-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.5 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6800