Large mouse cursor with alpha transparency distorts window decoration when using compiz

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff)]

Binary package hint: compiz-gnome

This is Ubuntu 8.04.1. When you choose to use the largest available mouse cursor size AND one of two standard cursors with alpha blending you get distortions in window decoration (title bars etc.) I can personally confirm this bug on NVidia 6600, 8800, 9600 GSO, 8400, Intel i910, Intel G33, AMD Ati Radeon 3450. This probabaly means that it's not a driver bug. Also, I see this bug in all Ubuntu versions starting from 6.06 with a manually installed Beryl.

I attach a video of these effects.

Exact steps to reproduce:
1. Have compiz configured.
2. Enable "wobbly windows" plugin (System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> Extra). This is not required but will demonstrate the bug more easily.
3. Choose a big transparent cursor in default theme
  a) System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Theme,
  b) choose "Human"
  c) then press "Customize..." button
  d) go to Pointer tab and choose "whiteglass" or "redglass", then move the "Size" slider all the way to the right ("Large").
4. Log out and log in back to gnome.
5. Try to move or resize some windows.

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

This bug contains screenshots I can easily reproduce here too, but the workarounds mentioned do not help:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xgl/+bug/114127

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Could you try to reproduce the same with Ubuntu 9.04? Thanks in advance.

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

9.04 is not released yet. I cannot install it.

The bug is definitely reproducible in 8.10.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Could you try 9.04 now please?

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

Yes, I just did. This bug is in 9.04. Nothing changed and the procedure to repeat it is the same.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for the report, it has been some time without any response or feedback in this bug report and we are wondering if this is still an issue for you with the latest release of Ubuntu the Natty Narwhal, May you please test with that version and comment back if you're still having or not the issue? Please have a look at http://www.ubuntu.com/download to know how to install that version.Thanks in advance.

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

This bug is still in Natty. Nothing changed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for compiz (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

This bug is still in Natty. Nothing changed.

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. Compiz, in particular, is in heavy development and this bug may have been fixed in the development version of Ubuntu (12.04) if not on your current version. If you are able, it would be of great help if you could confirm if the bug still exists by testing a livecd (available at ubuntu.com). When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #> and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue. If you are unable to test the development version, please let us know if you are able to reproduce this issue on Ubuntu 11.10.

Thank you for your help and patience.

[Алексей Капранов (Alex Kapranoff) (kkapp)]

Alas, Unity does not support changing mouse pointer size in a consistent way. One can do that via dconf-editor but it only works for half the interface.

This is a unfortunate degradation of quality for us, people with seeing problems.

Anyway, I managed to check how modern compiz behaves with big pointers and there is no change. The image distorts the same way as it did in 8.04. Maybe you can help me transfer this bug to compiz developers?

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Unfortunately, since it does appear to be an unsupported feature, this bug report is technically a wishlist item. We'll just have to wait and see. I think the most effective way to move this forward would be not to talk to the compiz developers but rather to the gnome accessibility team. Besides, they're the ones that used to support this feature. I'll send them an email to see if they intend on re-implementing this.

I'm afraid that this probably won't get fixed unless Gnome reimplements the functionality.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for compiz (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Compiz Core because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Eleni Maria Stea (hikiko)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. The compiz program that we currently use in Ubuntu is a C++ re-write of the original compiz and was announced the 4th July 2010. Therefore, the bugs that were reported before that date, will be marked as "Won't Fix" as they probably exist in the original program which is not stored in launchpad. (The last LTS that used the old compiz is the 10.04 which is not supported anymore).