A little shadow patch ...

[KnX]

Olivier Fourdan wrote:

>Hi
>
>The window manager does already have this feature, but it's not user
>configurable, it's for themes.
>
>I don't plan to make it configurable, so sorry, but that patch is not
>going mainstream...
>
>Cheers,
>Olivier.
>
>On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 21:28 +0100, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
>  
>
>>KnX wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I don't know if it could interest somebody, but i juste "finished" this :
>>>
>>>http://img83.exs.cx/img83/4497/MyHumbleShadowPatch_KnX.png
>>>
>>>I still have a problem though, when i change parameters in the mcs 
>>>plugin, i'd like to redraw the fullscreen and the gaussian map generator 
>>>if needed ( when shadow size change ) is there a clean way to do this ?
>>>      
>>>
>>It's of course up to Olivier, but personally I'm not convinced the 
>>shadow appearance should be configurable. And if it is I'm not sure it 
>>should be in the GUI.
>>    
>>
In fact, ( and that's why i did't post a code patch ) this was just a 
try to test the feature in itself and no the gui thing, I hate those 4 
sliders fur such a "useless" thing and i never meant to see this in the 
mainstream.

By the time i also thought about a few things :
- why shadows should always be gaussian calculation ( and not 
cartoon/rainbow/odd-even.... ) ?
- why calculate it if it's always the same during the whole runtime ? It 
could be some png files no ?
- what is the difference between the window theme and the shadows, if 
you think more, it's the same, 4 borders, 4 corners ?
- what could happen if the new alpha-png feature could be overflow 
outside of the classical non-alpha picture ?
I don't know exactely how the themes works, but i think it could be done 
and it could allow many many different shadow-style, always matching the 
window theme, and never use tons of settings for width, 
position,opacity,color,size,.... It also make easier to have a 
hard-border shadow match the shape of the window borders as they are 
made at the same time , whereas today shadows are rectangular.

There are still things to think about, like how to make this 
retro-compatible with old version ( in fact it's ok since old one 
doesn't manage png ) and compatible with composite disable ( 2 ways : 
fully disabling the png or having a kind of masking trick ). Another 
little "problem" is if we want to have transparent windows , the 
combination of the two would look strange as there would not be the 
shadow behind the window, this may need one more png for the back. These 
are just out-of-my-little-organic-box idea, but i think it may be a good 
way of managing shadows/alpha-borders without bloating the interface ( 
just a [X] Enable composite + [X] Enable translucent window borders ).