Clearer guide for creating borders.

[ghost]

• Description:
  I am at a loss of whether there is a specific format that borders need to be in, making it nigh on entirely guesswork to create a new one. A few that come to mind right now are

What pixel size does the border need to be?
It is still only PNGs, right? Edit: Would SVG be a popular feature?
Are aspect ratios supported, or would that just be a larger 1:1 image with a stretch?
Does color or transparency matter for the borders?

More information about the example pictures would be appreciated as well, such as what kind of blur/gradient the shadows use.

[skyler-shuman]

From my own experimentation:

1. Pixel size can be literally whatever you want, but the larger the image is, the more space your borders will take up. I'd aim for something reasonable for your gaps. @fluix-dev Is currently using 21 pixels for inner gaps of 28 and outer gaps of -8 in their dotfiles. That was a bit much for my comfort level, so I did 24 inner and 15 pixels for my image.
2. I tried JPEG and broke my sway. Afaik, only PNGs.
3. Aspect ratios do provide a stretch to the borders that gives a nice effect in some scenarios. In other words, if it's something you like, I'd go for it. I kind of like a slight skew on the x-axis.
4. Color and transparency matter quite a bit. To accomplish rounding, you absolutely need to use transparency at the corners. Placing transparency in the inside pixels will cause a detached border that IMO is not visually appealing at all. I personally like to set my inner color to match the themes of my browser and terminal's usual background so it looks like it's part of the content itself.

Once I finish with my own setup and experimentation, I wouldn't mind assisting with some of the documentation to explain how to achieve certain looks with border images.

[ghost]

Once I finish with my own setup and experimentation, I wouldn't mind assisting with some of the documentation to explain how to achieve certain looks with border images.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply, once I figure my borders out as well I would also participate in creating documentation.

[ackstorm23]

I've been playing with this and it seems as if only 100% transparency is recognized?

I do a gradient fade from a color to transparency in gimp for example, only the 100% transparent pixels end up transparent.

Disregard, it's working. I was just doing something wrong.