R – How does Windows change Aero Glass color

I already knew about the color escapes, I used them in my bash prompt a while ago. Thanks anyway.
What I wanted was to integrate it with the logging module, which I eventually did after a couple of tries and errors.
Here is what I end up with:

BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE = range(8)

#The background is set with 40 plus the number of the color, and the foreground with 30

#These are the sequences need to get colored ouput
RESET_SEQ = "\033[0m"
COLOR_SEQ = "\033[1;%dm"
BOLD_SEQ = "\033[1m"

def formatter_message(message, use_color = True):
    if use_color:
        message = message.replace("$RESET", RESET_SEQ).replace("$BOLD", BOLD_SEQ)
    else:
        message = message.replace("$RESET", "").replace("$BOLD", "")
    return message

COLORS = {
    'WARNING': YELLOW,
    'INFO': WHITE,
    'DEBUG': BLUE,
    'CRITICAL': YELLOW,
    'ERROR': RED
}

class ColoredFormatter(logging.Formatter):
    def __init__(self, msg, use_color = True):
        logging.Formatter.__init__(self, msg)
        self.use_color = use_color

    def format(self, record):
        levelname = record.levelname
        if self.use_color and levelname in COLORS:
            levelname_color = COLOR_SEQ % (30 + COLORS[levelname]) + levelname + RESET_SEQ
            record.levelname = levelname_color
        return logging.Formatter.format(self, record)

And to use it, create your own Logger:

# Custom logger class with multiple destinations
class ColoredLogger(logging.Logger):
    FORMAT = "[$BOLD%(name)-20s$RESET][%(levelname)-18s]  %(message)s ($BOLD%(filename)s$RESET:%(lineno)d)"
    COLOR_FORMAT = formatter_message(FORMAT, True)
    def __init__(self, name):
        logging.Logger.__init__(self, name, logging.DEBUG)                

        color_formatter = ColoredFormatter(self.COLOR_FORMAT)

        console = logging.StreamHandler()
        console.setFormatter(color_formatter)

        self.addHandler(console)
        return


logging.setLoggerClass(ColoredLogger)

Just in case anyone else needs it.

Be careful if you're using more than one logger or handler: ColoredFormatter is changing the record object, which is passed further to other handlers or propagated to other loggers. If you have configured file loggers etc. you probably don't want to have the colors in the log files. To avoid that, it's probably best to simply create a copy of record with copy.copy() before manipulating the levelname attribute, or to reset the levelname to the previous value, before returning the formatted string (credit to Michael in the comments).

Just use:

QPainter p

p.setCompositionMode(QPainter::CompositionMode_DestinationIn);
p.fillRect(boundsRect, QColor(0, 0, 0, 0));

This discards the old contents and fills with transparent color.

More info at

• http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Graphics/Performance#QPixmap::setAlphaChannel.28.29

• http://doc.qt.digia.com/qtjambi-4.4/html/com/trolltech/qt/gui/QPainter.CompositionMode.html

Edit: Better use CompositionMode_Clear and paint the rect with whatever color.