Parent-Child Model

It is strongly suggested that all transparency and overlays designs follow the simple underlay-parent overlay-child model. The desired underlay window is created first, and then the overlay is created as a child of the underlay. The overlay window is the only child of the underlay. This eliminates a number of odd cases for the X server, and also helps make sure there are no incidental interfering windows between the underlay and the overlay.

If using Xlib and/or programming your own XCreateWindow for these calls, it is important to understand that the client must provide extra information when creating a window that does not have the same visual as its parent. If the visual is not the default visual, you must provide a colormap or, if the colormaps are equivalent, assign the parent visual's colormap to the child. If the depths are different, you must provide a BorderPixel or BorderPixmap. Failure to do so may cause a BadMatch to return as the result of the create window.

For information about colormap equivalence, see the X Server Device Developer's Guide.