tilda transparency problem on arch linux using gnome

[ShinZ6]

Tilda doesn't have transparency on startup. Using Arch Linux with GNOME as a desktop environment.
The following error was shown:

(tilda:3042): Vte-CRITICAL : void vte_terminal_set_colors(VteTerminal, const GdkRGBA, const GdkRGBA*, const GdkRGBA*, gsize): assertion 'background == nullptr || valid_color(background)' failed

[jorgicio]

The same happens here, using MATE in Gentoo.

[wonux]

The same happens here, using dwm in Gentoo,Arch.

[adam-23]

When using .xprofile in Arch w/Gnome and X to startup tilda with cava, it starts with a black background, even though config_0 is set to 80% transparent. Here's what I'm using in .xprofile:

tilda &

Also, using another terminal like gnome-terminal or xfce4-terminal to open tilda still results in a black background (noted, the only issue is the background; it still loads at the correct size and other config settings, just not transparent at login).
For example:

gnome-terminal -e tilda &

[s0me-1]

Same error under Manjaro KDE 17

 (tilda:2547): Vte-CRITICAL **: void vte_terminal_set_colors(VteTerminal*, const GdkRGBA*, const GdkRGBA*, const GdkRGBA*, gsize): assertion 'background == nullptr || valid_color(background)' failed

[cgorgulla]

Same here again on Gentoo/Mate. But only with the latest 1.4 version which I have tried, the old version I had installed 1.1.12 worked well.

[victor-lund]

A dirty workaround is to set transparency to 99% instead of 100. Worked for me on Arch using tilda 1.5~alpha

[lanoxx]

I cannot reproduce the issue locally, but I found one place where an incorrect color value is computed and stored in the tilda configuration. It is possible that this is the cause of this error. In my case a negative value -65 was stored in the configuration when I set transparency to 100. I will fix this issue today.

Please have a look into the tilda config file and look for the value of back_alpha which stores the background alpha channel value as 16bit integer. The value should be between 0 and 65535. 0 means completely transparent and 65555 means completely opaque.

If you find a wrong value in the configuration, then please let me know if the problem is resolved if you close tilda, correct the value and start tilda again. Note that tilda writes the config on exit, so you cannot change it manually while tilda is running.

[lanoxx]

It would be helpful to have a stacktrace. Could you by any chance run tilda with G_DEBUG="fatal-criticals" in GDB and try to get a stacktrace of the problem?

[Mihaion]

Thanks Victor-lund

[bitshiftnetau]

Can confirm issue is still present in Arch Linux. Possibly will require an update to our native repo binary.

prior to fix:
back_alpha=-65

post-fix:
back_alpha=0

[arbaes]

@lanoxx i'd like to provide you a stacktrace but I'm not sure what to do since I never used GDB before. From what I understood I have to compile tilda in a specific way to have the debug informations, do you have any doc for that ?

[eduardobeattie]

I solved this problem in KDE by having this as the startup command:
until /usr/bin/qdbus org.kde.KWin; do sleep 0.5; done; /usr/bin/tilda
This waits until the composer (KWin) is loaded and available before launching tilda, which makes transparency work on startup. Hopefully someone can adapt this to work for GNOME :)