Inconsistent light sources for focused vs. unfocused windows

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

light-themes 0.1.8.10, compiz 1:0.9.4-0ubuntu7, Ubuntu Natty

For an unfocused window, the light source for its shadow is somewhere above and behind your head: the shadow is small and appears only on the sides and bottom, not the top.

For a focused window, however, the light source for the shadow appears to be attached to your nose. It is equally wide around all four sides of the window, which means it must be centered on the window, but your head isn't casting a shadow on the window, so the light source must be between your face and the window, but then why can't you see the light source itself?

It's perfectly legitimate for the shadows of focused and unfocused windows to be different widths; it suggests the focused window is closer to the light source, and therefore closer to you. But the position of the light source must be the same, otherwise it looks fake. This can easily be fixed by removing the shadow from the top side of focused windows.

It may save time to fix bug 659816 at the same time as this bug.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Needs more investigation since I don't know the themeing schema inside-out; I assume the different is:

        <shadow radius="8.0" opacity="0.5" color="#abde4f" x_offset="1" y_offset="4"/>
        <shadow radius="8.0" opacity="0.3" color="#abde4f" x_offset="1" y_offset="1"/>

with "x-offset" and "y-offset" being the source source direction.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Targetting for release; rather than UI freeze. This doesn't actually change the perceived user-interaction, just makes the screenshots included in documentation look less perfect.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Sam: before I start-from-scratch investigating compiz; can you give a quick synopsis of where the light-source is coming from.

[Kate Stewart (kate.stewart)]

Too late for this to be considered for Natty, and not SRU material. Moving to Oneiric for consideration.