Re: Re-inventing Metatheme

[<bordoley msu edu>]

I guess I'm just not a real big fan of metatheme. I would rather see 
something akin to themeballs, basically tarballs which can be installed 
through the current theme dialog and provide theming for all aspects of the 
desktop.

Basically this would involve all apps following the gtk2 theme install style, 
similar to the one you have presented.

(ex. themename/gtk2/
              /gtk/
              /metacity/
              /icons/
)  

Some other comments.

1. It is very likely that in gnome2.2 there will be no such thing as a 
nautilus theme (havoc is pushing for this i know). Instead there will be icon 
themes that can be used to theme icons for mimetype etc for all gnome apps(if 
i understand right, this may even extend to kde apps).

2. I dont think background images should be included with themes. Backgrounds 
tend to be highly personal (eg. I have a picture of my baby brother for my 
background, and while he is a pretty cute kid, i don't really think anyone 
else would want him as their background, except maybe my parents).

3. Quite likely gnome-cd themes will go away in favor gtk theming (well at 
least the button theming, and most likely the default lcd background will be 
based on the system theme and be themable still).

4. Given item 3. I don't think we should be encouraging apps to include their 
own theming, its bad for both accessibility and usability. Instead apps 
should just follow the system wide theming (This holds especially for mozilla 
which should just get rid of its silly theming mechanism and just follow the 
system theme for each respective system, ie. gtk, windows etc.).

5. Given all the above comments, I wouldn't personally be against including a 
metathemer similar to the one you have proposed as part of fifth toe, but it 
definately doesn't seem sane to make it part of the core gnome desktop imho.

dave



Rodney Dawes <dobey free fr> said:

> Hi,
> 
> Here's a proposal of a way to layout themes for all of GNOME and more.
> Hope people like it.
> 
> -- dobey
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This is a "mockup" of how re-inventing metatheme will be useful. It
> consists of moving all themes under GNOME in the theme-name directories
> that now, both Metacity and GTK+ use. Below is a layout of how this will
> work, though I am going to ignore gnome 1.4/gtk 1.2 things, because we
> need to get rid of them at some point, and there is no reason to try to
> make them better. Below is the proposed layout for this new "metatheme"
> directory structure. After this, metatheme itself, will need a rewrite
> to work with it, instead of the old metatheme structure, which, while
> very modularized, is still a pita to use. Also, there are two sections
> to this. Firstly, the things that covers most all of gnome itself.
> Secondly, there is a section for other applications, that could have
> their themes go here, but aren't actually gnome apps.
> 
> ThemeName/
> 
> 	theme-icon.foo <- icon for the theme
> 	wallpaper.foo <- possible background image
> 	panel-bg.foo <- possible panel background image
> 	theme-info.xml <- information about the theme, and what images 	
		to
> use for the icon, wallpaper, and panel, etc...
> 
> 	applets/
> 		<theme stuff for various applets (possibility)>
> 
> 	gnome-cd/
> 		<theme stuff for gnome-cd>
> 
> 	gnome-vfs/
> 		<a bunch of mime icons>
> 
> 	gnomeicu/
> 		<a pretty gnomeicu theme>
> 
> 	gtk-2.0/
> 		gtkrc
> 		<possible theme/stock icon images, etc...>
> 
> 	gtk-2.0-key/
> 		gtkrc
> 
> 	metacity-1/ <- why is there a -1 on the end of this?
> 		metacity-theme-1.xml <- ditto?
> 		<possible theme images>
> 
> 	nautilus/
> 		nautilus-theme.xml <- nautilus-specific stuff
> 		throbber/
> 			<images for the throbber>
> 		sidebar_tab_pieces/
> 			<sidebar images>
> 		<other icons that will ONLY affect nautilus>
> 
> 	sounds/
> 		sound-events.soundlist
> 		<a bunch of wav/mp3/blah files>
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
> 
> 	gkrellm/
> 		<theme for gkrellm to make it look like gtk/metacity>
> 
> 	x-chat/
> 		<x-chat has themes, why not put them here?>
> 
> 	xmms/
> 		<"skins" they are called, ditto>
> 
> 	other-random-app/
> 		<other random app's theme/skins info>
> 
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