Request for feedback: magick_background widget (background FX)

[Lokaltog]

I've implemented an alternative way to create background effects, as CSS filters proved to be a bit wonky (the blur effect is a major hassle to implement properly, and the webview frequently crashed due to out of memory errors when testing it with various images and settings).

This feature requires graphicsmagick (switched from imagemagick due to poor performance) to work, which isn't ideal, but I don't know another better way of doing this efficiently. The bg image is generated on startup and don't use any extra resources when wkline is running.

What this widget does is crop an image of your choice, then apply a configurable amount of brightness/saturation/blur to the image, then sets it as the statusline background image.

Here's a screenshot of a test I just did with blur and lower brightness applied:

To enable this widget, make sure you have graphicsmagick installed and recompile wkline. You should now be able to enable the magick_background widget in your config.json:

        {
            "module": "magick_background",
            "config": {
                "image": "file:///path/to/your/bg-image.jpg",
                "blur_radius": 0,
                "brightness": 100,
                "saturation": 100
            }
        },

These are the options you're most likely to want to use currently, the rest are defined in the widget header file. The brightness and saturation settings are set as percentages in the range 0..100 (100 is default brightness/saturation).

You may need to tweak the values depending on your background image and preference. I found that a blur radius of 3 or 4, brightness of 70-80 and saturation of 0 looks pretty good with medium to dark images.

Anyways, it would be great if you guys could give me some feedback on this and let me know what you think, or if you have suggestions to other effects that can be added (any feature of graphicsmagick is possible).

[Lokaltog]

Here's an example of a frosted glass effect made possible by the latest commits:

Settings:

            "config": {
                "image": "...",
                "blur_radius": 6,
                "brightness": 130,
                "saturation": 100,
                "css_gradient_overlay": "top, rgba(255,255,255,.3), rgba(255,255,255,.2) 15%, rgba(255,255,255,.3) 95%, rgba(255,255,255,.2)"
            }

[alspore]

I don't think that the configuration should be stored in config.json because it will add a couple steps to installing themes from others.

Would it be possible to store the config information as part of the theme?

[Lokaltog]

The theme ultimately decides what to do with the information it receives as you can see here. You could create a theme that completely ignores the CSS and implements its own overlay, or ignores the magick_background widget completely. I did try to implement a default gradient in the theme, but it's impossible to find a combination of blur/brightness/saturation and a gradient overlay that works well for any kind of background image.

I also don't think we should tie the background effect to the themes in any way, as it requires graphicsmagick, and I'm 100% certain that a lot of users don't want the extra dependency or don't think the effect looks good.

While you make a good point that it will be more difficult to installing themes from others I think that the best solution would be that theme creators create themes that will work with any background image, and not depend on this widget. The default theme uses RGBA colors instead of grayscale colors in order to accomplish this. If other themes do the same you could ideally either use the default theme background or any combination of magick_background effects in any theme - i.e. if you prefer the frosted glass effect you can keep that look in any theme you choose to install.

I'm not sure if this is the best or most user-friendly way of doing it though, so please let me know if you have any ideas to how this can be implemented in a better way.

[Lokaltog]

Closing due to lack of feedback.