Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 04:27:27 -0500 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav <des@des.no> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The future of X? Message-ID: <20031114092727.GA9867@online.fr> In-Reply-To: <xzp4qx771za.fsf@dwp.des.no> References: <20031114002204.GA1035@online.fr> <xzp4qx771za.fsf@dwp.des.no>
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Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav said on Nov 14, 2003 at 10:07:05: > Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> writes: > > Well, I don't know about slow, but I like those blurry drop-shadows :-) > > Drop shadows on menus are wrong. The menu is attached to the menu > bar, which is in the plane of the application window, so it cannot > possibly be floating a quarter-inch in front of and paralell to the > application window as the shadow suggests. In that screenshot, the menu does seem to be floating above the menu bar and casts a bit of a shadow on the menu bar. I see no harm in that but I agree it's not terribly useful. > Drop shadows on regular windows are hardly any better. First, it > raises the question of what plane the mouse pointer moves in; either > the mouse pointer should cast a shadow, or the system should allow me > to control its position in the Z axis, allowing me to move it between > overlapping windows, etc. Second, the screenshots show windows > casting shadows of equal width on other windows despite differences in > conceptual depth. If window A is a quarter-inch in front of window B, > and window B is a quarter-inch in front of window C, there should be a > discernible difference in the shadows window A cast on windows B and > C, and areas in which both A and B cast a shadow on C should be darker > than areas in which only one of them casts a shadow. I don't think it's necessary to interpret all this so literally. One may as well demand a ray-tracing program with a hypothetical light source some distance in front of the screen. The three-window inconsistency you describe is on http://freedesktop.org/~keithp/screenshots/screen1.png but I doubt anyone will be misled by it or even notice it unless they're looking for it. The main advantage of shadows would be to give extra relief to the window currently in focus. Especially nice if you have 20 windows open and come back after a coffee break. I'd equally like some simpler scheme which just slightly greys/desaturates everything except the window in focus (the way KDE/GNOME do when you're about to logout, but more understated), I imagine that would be easy to implement with alpha channels. On a related note, I think Apple's exposé is the neatest desktop feature I've seen in a very long time. Too bad I don't use/have Apple computers. Rahul
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