Re: GEP-2 Theme Sets (aka Metathemer)

[textshell neutronstar dyndns org]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 04:53:24PM -0500, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> 
> > If the preview is generated on the fly rather than being a pixmap
> > (something like metacity-theme-viewer does, but showing more elements of
> > the theme), this probably isn't a problem.  If you want it to be a
> > pixmap supplied with the theme, though, it becomes confusing for the
> > user when the theme is "Currently Modified" as the pixmap won't reflect
> > the changes.
> > 
> > That brings us back to a debate we had before about whether the preview
> > is required at all if the dialog is instant-apply (which is how it seems
> > you've designed it just now).  Or perhaps the metatheme-selection part
> > should have an Apply button, but the individual elements should remain
> > instant apply, which would probably be my preference given the speed of
> > theme changes on my Solaris box :)
> 
> This is causing me trouble as well.  I was able to make a simple theme
> previewer to auto generate an image of the theme code.  However, it does
> you no good if you have to switch themes to see it.  An alternative that
> Seth proposed is to put a small icon of each theme in the list just like
> the Nautilus theme capplet used to do.  Something like
> http://www.stanford.edu/~snickell/thumbnail.png
> could be autogenerated for each theme and placed in the list.
> 
> An alternative is to go to non-instant apply, though I'd be sorry to
> lose this feature.
> 

Would that preview be fast enough to key it to hoover? So the user sees the
preview while he mouses over the possible choices and has instant apply on
click.

That way we could have preview and instant apply at the same time.



Martin H.