Semi-transparent, unreadable window using Compiz (for the very first time, for the very first app)

(Italian version follows)

Today I tried to install ymol, a molecular visualisation and animation program for the X Window System, on my Ubuntu Edgy.

The compilation and installation was well, surprisingly when I launched the program i got a white windows, except for the title bar. To say the truth some parts of the window, in particular the menu bar become transparent. It was the first time it happened me, and I thought it could be correlated to Compiz. In fact when I compiled ymol on Dapper everything was OK.

The transparent window of ymol using compiz

After some useless googling I remembered that I had already read a post on a forum some time ago, reporting the case of another app showing the same behavior with Compiz .

As always it was on the blog http://pollycoke.wordpress.com, one of the leading Italian Linux dedicated blogs. The exact address is here.

Anyway it suffice so edit in a shell

$: XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 yourprogram

This just sets the environment variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS to the correct value.

Hope it will help someone else :-).

Here follow few lines for the Italian Folks.

Oggi ho cercato di installare dai sorgenti ymol, un programma di grafica ed animazione molecolare, interfacciato con povray, sulla mia Ubuntu Edgy con Compiz. Ma la finestra, una volta lanciato il programma, appariva illeggibile, quasi del tutto trasparente, specialmente nella barra del menù e nel testo, rendendo il programma inutilizzabile.

Siccome il programma funzionava correttamente su Dapper senza Compiz, ho cercato su google per avere notizie di qualcun altro che avesse notato questo comportamento anomalo delle finestre, senza trovare nulla.Poi mi sono ricordato di questo post.

Guardate la parte in inglese per vedere cosa basta fare.