Re: GEP-2 Theme Sets (aka Metathemer)

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

textshell neutronstar dyndns org writes:

> 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.

Interesting idea.

We don't currently do this anywhere else in GNOME, but that is certainly
a possibility.  It seems to me more like a 'web' thing to do.  I can
turn on prelighting in the list to give it an underline as well.  I am
planning on caching the preview images so it should be fast enough after
an initial preparation time.

Thanks,
-Jonathan