I just tried scaling a spot, using the widgets. This allows ‘stretched’ lights in some 3D packages, but not all. Oddly, Blender allowed me to deform the icon for the spot (scaled up the X-axis for a stretching effect), but nothing happened in the render.
Am I doing something wrong, or does Blender not allow manually scaled lights (despite deforming the lamp icon)?
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I don’t think blender takes into account the deforming of lights unless they are area lights.
Thanks. Too sad, though, I like doing stretched lights 
Well, can you elaborate on what “stretched lights” are? I have never heard of that feature, so it might be very well do-able in Blender, but we don’t know what you exactly mean. Or at least, I don’t.
In Max I got some interesting effects quickly by simply stretching a lamp in one dimension. When I used a scale widget in Blender to increase the X-size of a lamp icon, I thought the same might be possible.
It’s just a one-dimensional change in the light cast by a (spot) lamp. Rather than forming a circle, the spotlight would cast an elipse-shaped light.
well, yes, spotlights that change their falloff look longer (bigger triangle), and change their angle (wider cone base) in the 3D view. I think you found a bug in the widget. Scaling it should have changed the falloff and spotsize, and it didnt but made it look like it did. Congrats, darn it. Report it on the bug log.
Yay, my first official bug! Where is the bug log?