Shadows don't appear

[Tanner1294]

Shadows that are part of the Oxygen window decoration (i.e. the default glowing blue shadows around windows) show up just fine but regular shadows that are supposed to appear under menus and such don't appear. I've noticed that there's a thin bad looking outline that looks like the beginning of the shadow but the rest won't appear unless whatever's underneath the shadow updates. Look at the screenshots to see what I mean. For the screenshot I had the the Shadow settings (under Desktop Effects) set very large and dark so that you can see the error more clearly.

[Snowhog]

Re: Shadows don't appear

I honestly don't think you have a problem. The same 'glowing' window shadows that you see on a windowed application are not the same shadow that you are describing on menu windows. What you are seeing, even before making the shadow adjustment, is normal.

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

I honestly don't think you have a problem. The same 'glowing' window shadows that you see on a windowed application are not the same shadow that you are describing on menu windows. What you are seeing, even before making the shadow adjustment, is normal.

It is a problem. As you can see, the only place the shadow showed up correctly is next to the second menu. The rest is just a thin dark line. I know what the shadow's supposed to look like.

[Snowhog]

Re: Shadows don't appear

Okay, I see what you are describing now.

What Desktop Theme are you using?

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

The Desktop theme is the default Air theme. The applications theme is also the default Oxygen theme. I've changed some settings but this was happening as soon as it was installed. This is also the second time I've installed 11.04 and I had the same problem last time.
This didn't happen though when I had installed the beta of 11.04 and let it upgrade the packages to 11.04 Stable.

[x-shaney-x]

Re: Shadows don't appear

I don't get the partial shadow you are experiencing, just no shadow at all.

It's quite strange since the KDE site points to the "new" shadow system as being a major feature yet there are no shadows.
Much searching around the net hasn't uncovered anything either.
I'm guessing either 99.9% of KDE users stick with oxygen so don't notice the problem or only a tiny percentage are on 4.7

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

Why have a new shadow system? It's shadows, and they work, there's nothing they can do except in this case, break them. If you look closely there's about a pixel of a shadow around the edges of the menu and there's a sharp corner from the shadow.

[x-shaney-x]

Re: Shadows don't appear

Well from various bits and bobs I have read, KDE devs weren't happy with the old shadow system as it didn't follow window shapes, was overly heavy on memory and the code was messy, along with various technical elements which I don't really understand.

I understand they want to improve something but why point it out as a feature for a new release when it isn't even there?

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

It's there, it's just busted. I think I know what they meant by not following window shapes... I've had the shadow show up before the window or menu itself, and the shadow is literally the same shape and size as the entire window. It's the same as the shadows in compiz on ubuntu.

[x-shaney-x]

Re: Shadows don't appear

But surely shadows that look ok are better than none at all? People do then have the OPTION to switch them off?
I have never tried be-shadowed but maybe something like that needs to be added to KDE so at least people who want them can use them.

I have had shadows enabled ever since xcompmgr and I just like the way they separate windows and menus.
With no shadows, everything seems to mingle together in one big visual mess to me

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

I know right? It should at LEAST have a backwards compatibility mode. My computer literally has no graphics card but isn't that old (2007) so it has trouble rendering some of these "new" effects like the shadow.

[Poborskiii]

Re: Shadows don't appear

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...and-no-oxygen/

[x-shaney-x]

Re: Shadows don't appear

The link has already been posted though I would like to pick up on a comment made by martin

"it is my belief that you cannot have a generic shadow which looks good with all widget styles, windows and color schemes."

Fair enough, but the generic shadow we had before looked just fine with 90% of themes. Now all themes that aren't shadowed (that I have tried) have a tiny, ugly black border with jagged corners. How on earth is that an improvement?

It's a bit like walking around in the middle of winter in just a T-shirt because your coat had a small hole that only you noticed?
Clearly Martin is not going to be swayed and the old generic shadows are gone as far as he is concerned so clearly we need to wait until themes are updated to support shadows (and I have themes that I still use that haven't been updated in yonks so I wouldn't hold out too much hope for that).

Otherwise we wait for someone to create a standalone shadow plugin and wait several releases until it is accepted into KDE or compile ourselves.

Or the final option is to learn to code and create our own shadow system or themes supporting the new shadows (which I for one don't have time to learn anything )

[Tanner1294]

Re: Shadows don't appear

It still doesn't make sense that the default oxygen theme wouldn't have working shadows. The window shadows work just fine but only because they are built directly into the theme. I'll post more pictures later.

[x-shaney-x]

Re: Shadows don't appear

Ahh, I see what you mean. Menu shadows do appear for me when using "proper" oxygen (though so subtle you can barely tell).
However, gtk apps using the oxygen theme (oxygen-gtk) weren't showing shadows in menus after the updates.
I had to manually install a newer oxygen-gtk version to get those.