Re: gep-2, Desktop Theme Sets

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

I basically agree with Nils here in the need for requirements. I am
personally slightly resentlful of the strong slanting on this gep (just
count how many times it goes out of the way to re-iterate that fonts
will be part of the theme set! :-). 

I would prefer to start from a more neutral requirements gep with each
section written by the respective representatives from each field. So
Bill (and Calum?) would work on drafting some accesibility requirements,
Nils, Calum and I (and Suz?) would work on drafting some usability
requirements. All this would be mediated with technical requirements
detailed by involved hackers who would be able to provide implementation
constraints (for example, figuring out the minimuum time application of
proposed theme elements would take).

Each group drafting requirements has a responsibility to provide the
most general restriction that fufills their criteria. So for example, it
would be improper to place a usability requirement that "fonts are not
included in the desktop theme dialog". Similarly, it would be improper
to place an accesibility requirement that "fonts are changed by the
desktop theme dialog". Instead they would be better written as, e.g.,
"settings that most users will want to change from the theme defaults
should not be included in the theme" and "selecting an accesibility
theme should change the fonts too". Otherwise our requirements are going
to quickly devolve into tools for "locking in" a particular interface.

-Seth

On Thu, 2002-08-29 at 16:12, Nils Pedersen wrote:
> Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> > Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com> writes:
> > 
> >>gep-2, a proposal for "Desktop Theme Set" support, is now in GNOME cvs. 
> >>I don't think the push to the website is working yet, so I attach the
> >>current revision, or you can get it from cvs/gep/proposals/gep-2.html
> >>
> >>
> > 
> > I force-updated it. Tried jrb's rube goldberg thing but didn't really
> > succeed.
> >  
> > 
> > Anyway, I want to see us start from the top down. We are basically out
> > of space in the Preferences menu. Do we add submenus and end up like
> > the KDE prefs menu or the GNOME 1.x menu of old?
> > 
> > If not we need to think this through.
> > 
> > Just adding a Theme Set control panel will give us these
> > appearance-related control panels:
> > 
> >  - Background
> >  - Font           (we should rename this Fonts btw)
> >  - Theme          (includes toolkit - WM - icon)
> >  - Theme Set      (includes both Background and Fonts in the set, not
> >                    just themes)
> > 
> > In this setup we're still missing one possibly important panel, namely
> > Colors where you can just change colors (overriding the theme
> > presumably). [1] 
> > 
> > I believe that having both Theme and Theme Set, with Theme Set
> > actually grouping Background and Fonts in addition to Theme, makes
> > little sense. So I'm opposed to just adding a Theme Set control panel
> > without reworking the big picture.
> 
> 
> Yes, I'm beginning to think we are overloading the theme concept here.
> 
>  From the Documentation style guide:
> 
> "A group of coordinated settings that specify how a part of your interface
> appears. For example, you can select a default theme for dialog elements."
> 
> Which also seems pretty broad.
> 
> 
> > 
> > How to rework?
> 
> 
> Well one way might to be take a step back and try and figure out what the
> requirements are :)
> 
> For example:
> 
> Gnome should support single switch configuration to support different
> classes of user. These classes of user could be determined by:
> 
> 1) accessibility requirements
> 2) previous experiences (transitioning windows users)
> 3) environment (home user, work user, country, language)
> 4) some custom config that a sysadmin wants
> etc...
> 
> Now the scope of some of these "coordinated settings" are beyond what we 
> 
> have been talking about. But if we introduce say the concept of "User Theme"
> 
> as well as appearance theme (which we already have), then maybe both Bill
> and Seth will be happy. I'm not suggesting that we go off and implement
> something that meets all the above requirements, but the different classes of
> a11y user could be the first step?
> 
> I dunno, just an idea, take it or leave it...
> 
> Nils
> 
> P.S. and i didn't use the p word once :)
> 
> 
>  
> 
>