How can I create an X window/client that is on top of all other windows, not under WM control and has no input? (overlay, OSD)

Question

I want to write applications (or use existing ones, that would be even more convenient) that behave like a hardware screens OSD (on screen display), only without input.

That is: A graphical output (eg from a GUI toolkit like Qt or Gtk) is placed on a layer where it is above even fullscreen-windows like Firefox F11 mode or a video player in fullscreen mode. That includes "above" the mouse cursor as well, so technically and graphically the mouse cursor would move below this widget. I don't know about real fullscreen applications with SDL or OpenGL though, but this is not the requirement. If you know this as well please include it in your answer.

Real world applications are read-only overlays like a little webcam window, a TV-station like logo or premade annotations. So all in all this is meant for live presentations, streaming and recording of screencasts and tutorials with minimal post processing.

My own hacked, unsuccesful, experiments showed at least that removing this window from the WM control ( I did this by choosing a GTK popup dialog instead of a real main window) lets you position in absolute coordinates and it will ignore things like virtual desktops and workspaces, which is good, so you can switch between those and the overlay/HUD will stay in place.

Of course this cannot be done in software with the same Z-value (top/bottom windows) as the hardware screen. So technically I am talking above all other windows but below the screensaver or lock-screen layer.

+1 internet for linking to docs and giving the right keywords.

+2 internet for a working code example, language, gui-toolkit etc. doesn't matter.

Answer 1

You probably need composite overlay window from Composite extension - see section 3.2 "Composite Overlay Window" extension docs. (cursor is above this window)

Version 0.3 of the protocol adds the Composite Overlay Window, which provides compositing managers with a surface on which to draw without interference. This window is always above normal windows and is always below the screen saver window. It is an InputOutput window whose width and height are the screen dimensions. Its visual is the root visual and its border width is zero. Attempts to redirect it using the composite extension are ignored. This window does not appear in the reply of the QueryTree request. It is also an override redirect window. These last two features make it invisible to window managers and other X11 clients. The only way to access the XID of this window is via the CompositeGetOverlayWindow request. Initially, the Composite Overlay Window is unmapped.

Example using node-x11 :

var x11 = require('x11');

x11.createClient(function(err, display) {
    var X = display.client;
    var root = display.screen[0].root;
    X.require('composite', function(err, Composite) {
      Composite.GetOverlayWindow(root, function(err, overlay) {
        // already automatically mapped here:
        //
        // CompositeGetOverlayWindow returns the XID of the Composite Overlay
        // Window. If the window has not yet been mapped, it is mapped by this
        // request. When all clients who have called this request have terminated
        // their X11 connections the window is unmapped.
      });
    });
});