What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. any new/old gentoo sys install, then ebuild e or install from svn, run new or old ecomorph 2. using an nvidia card with the proprietary nvidia driver 3. use either e17 dropshadow module or ecomorph's window decorations module with emerald installed and running

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

two things happen:

1) using e17's dropshadow module + new or old ecomorph I get shadow ghosting from an app on every other e17 desktop (I have 4 desktops or viewports or whatever they're called now, and regardless of which desktop I'm on when I start an app its shadow is ghosted onto the other 3)

2) disabling the dropshadow module, installing emerald and using ecomorph window decorations module instead, I get no app frame shadow at all

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

1) ecomorph: this happens with the older release (~july/august?) and I just tried again yesterday with the new tars

2) machine/os: intel core2, gentoo (a 16-month-old install and a day-old separate chroot install with all new gentoo stuff)

3) e17: my gentoo ebuild e17 from ~april and an svn e17 built just yesterday on the gentoo chroot install using e17 wiki instructions

4) nvidia 7600gt card with proprietary driver rev 100.14.09 and also driver rev 173.14.09

Please provide any additional information below.

ecomorph is a fantastic thing (thanks!!) and I really appreciate you made this.

I asked you in email a long time ago about the ghosting and you said it had something to do with nvidia/nvidia drivers or something and to use emerald instead.

but while very many things in ecomorph modules work great for me, window decorations module has never seemed to do anything at all; definitely don't get any shadows even after fiddling with all parameters in the module's settings.

hm emerald 'just works' here. i use the ubuntu package version 0.7.2 with nvidia, intel and ati. other than that: if you use ccp and ecsm i noticed there are really problems with module loading... sometimes it just resets the config :/ try to start it with 'ecomorph decoration' to make sure the module is loaded. if you have compiz installed it might be that emerald linked against its libdecoration (locate libdecoration.pc).

and e's dropshadow module should be disable in any case as it only draws on the desktop ;)

oh the last guess didnt made sense, as i use packages myself :)

oh and you have to start emerald separately the 'command' option in ecsm isnt used (and is now removed)

fantastic! I recompiled emerald against ecomorph's libdecoration* and FINALLY I get real shadows :) thanks

ok, wanted to add a follow up in case someone else runs across this.

compiling against ecomorph libdecoration* is not what fixed this for me - it was using emerald-0.7.8 and compiling it against ecomorph libdecoration*; emerald-0.5.2 doesn't work (for window decorations) under any circumstance. it was just coincidence in trying to get it to work that I finally ended up with emerald-0.7.8, and then that I recompiled it.

it's possible that in a gentoo system something about installing emerald-0.7.8 pulled in something that doesn't get pulled in with emerald-0.5.2, or some unseen internal change because of 0.7.8 that doesn't happen with 0.5.2, etc., and that's the reason 0.5.2 wouldn't work (for me, and for window decorations only), I'm pretty sure that isn't what's happening but I'm worn out experimenting so will never know for sure :)

even once shadows do work I don't seem to have any control whatsoever over shadow properties (radius, opacity, x/y, etc.) - it's like I get a default shadow and I can't change anything about it (yes, did plenty of fiddling with ecsm, kill/restart ecomoph/emerald, logged out/in, editing Default.ini etc).

hannes.janetzek: there's probably too many variables and too small an audience for you to bother trying to understand what's going on so I'm mostly just posting to alert any others that run into this that a system older than 3-6 months might be a nightmare trying to get window decorations to work; and once you do you can't change shadow props afaict.

hello, no problem. i decided to leave to issues for ecomorph open so that anyone interested can look through it and maybe find some hints.

emerald lower than 0.7 wont work as the plugin and the decoration manager exchange compatibility version numbers. so the decoration module just ignores old decoration managers.

the shadow settings in ecsm have no effect: use emerald-theme-manager. i'ill disable those options in ecsm soon

ok, I think I confused myself and everybody else :)

shadow props:

I almost tried editing the emerald cfg then for some reason forgot to test that :) now I know

emerald rev:

I have multiple systems on my machine - one is a brand-new gentoo chroot from a few days ago with all brand-new stuff (new ecomorph tars, svn e17, current core libs, etc.). that's the one I got shadows to work on.

but on my day-to-day sys I have the ~july ecomorph, ~april/may livecvs of e17, should an older emerald like 0.5.2 give me window decoration there too?

I don't want to use 0.7.8 on my day-to-day sys because there's too many dependecies I don't want to mess with but iirc shadows have worked in ecomorph for many months, just not for me :( so do you remember the exact rev emerald you were using back then?