Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.4.95) OS: Linux When using VLC with a skin, KWin doesn't drop a shadow under the window, or apply translucency when moving it, and generally doesn't seem to treat VLC as a normal window. The current handling deviates from how other windows behave (no shadows, no translucency when moving the window, snap-to-borders doesn't work the same way as other KDE windows, etc.) On the VLC forums, I was told that this is because VLC is not a KDE application, and later that I should tell the KWin devs about it. (Forum post: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=80400) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Start VLC in skins mode.
vlc's skinned interface uses shaped ARGB windows that would require (have a look at eg. the PSP skin) shaped shadows (ie. copying and blurring the windows alpha mask) what is not supported (so far?!?) and would pot. lead to conflicts with other windows sharing these attributes and painting their "own shadows". (aside being pretty slow) if you use a nearby rectangular skin you can use this "fork" http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=121607 and set a property to force shadow painting nevertheless, scripted like #!/bin/sh /usr/bin/vlc & # launch vlc sleep 5 # sleep 5 seconds to ensure vlc has started and the windows are mapped #grep the WId's vlc_ids=$(xwininfo -root -int -tree | grep vlc | sed -e 's/^ *\([^ ]*\).*$/\1/g') #set properties for all id's for id in $vlc_ids; do xprop -id $id -f _KDE_SHADOW_FORCE 32a -set _KDE_SHADOW_FORCE 1 done but i'd recommand to use the Qt interface for performance reasons - esp. with enabled compositing
ps: stuff like wobbly windows et. al won't work since skinned vlc tries to act as WM by itself what prevents several state (moving etc.) interceptions - this won't fix.
This is a bug in vlc. As vlc tries to be smart (moving window by itself, etc.) it is completely bypassing the window manager which causes problems as seen here in this bug report. You can find a more complete list of the problems which are caused by applications like vlc in my blog post: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2010/05/open-letter-the-issues-with-client-side-window-decorations/ Feel free to forward this information to VLC - they really should change this behavior. It's completely broken and there is no reason to do it.