Re: GEP-2 Theme Sets (aka Metathemer)

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

Calum Benson <calum benson sun com> writes:

> On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 21:53, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> 
> > Fonts seem to come up a lot... (-:  I could change it to a toggle button
> > instead of an 'apply button', but I'm not convinced that that makes any
> > more sense.
> 
> Well, as Soeren said, it just makes it quicker to 'undo' an illegible
> (or just plain unpleasant) font.  If you only have the 'Apply Font'
> button, you have to go back and select a different theme (or perhaps
> just add a 'Revert' button to the dialog) to restore some sanity.

How does the font toggle button interact with the Font dialog?

> I'm also wondering if it would make sense (or even if it's technically
> possible) for a theme set change *not* to affect the Themes dialog
> itself until you close it and re-open it again?  That would certainly
> make it much less likely for a user to get into a state where they can't
> see how to undo a bad theme.

Oh.  Hmm...  Lemme think about that.  That's probably doable, though it
could also cause problems the other direction.  If you get the theme in
an awkward state, you might have trouble switching it out.  Also, it
might be a bit disorienting to people.  Perhaps a 'Change your
resolution' style confirmation dialog in the old theme is needed?

> > I don't understand why we want the theme to touch the font for a11y.  To
> > be honest, it makes more sense to me that it wouldn't.  Once you have a
> > good font that you can read you want everything to use it.  I don't see
> > a point in over-optimizing for a pretty specialized initial use case.
> 
> Well, I know we're never going to agree on this :)  But I'm not
> convinced it's an a11y-only case, although I agree it's primarily an
> initial-use case.  
> 
> My guess is that most people who like to fiddle with these sorts of
> things will want to change both their theme and their font pretty soon
> after they log in for the first time.  So I don't see any reason not to
> offer them the choice of a font there and then that harmonises nicely
> with whatever theme they select.

And their background, and their mouse settings, and their....

We need to draw the line somewhere.  Still, I don't mind the current
mechanism of setting the font, especially if I make explicit what is
being set.

> Of course in the a11y case you'd be doing them a big extra favour,
> because if somebody needs high contrast and large print and you have to
> set theme and font in separate dialogs, then they have to either first
> navigate a font dialog whose colours make it impossible to read, or a
> theme dialog whose font is too small to read.

I would really like to see us have a 'Set up a11y initially' dialog.  I
think that would solve a lot of these problems, and genuinely be pretty
useful.

> > Something like
> > http://www.stanford.edu/~snickell/thumbnail.png
> > could be autogenerated for each theme and placed in the list.
> 
> It's a possibility, I just wonder if it would be big enough to offer
> much useful information.  It is only a preview though I guess, so maybe
> it would be sufficient.

I think it might give people enough of an idea that it jogs the memory.
It clearly won't give a full idea, though.

> > > http://www.gnome.org/~calum/metatheme.pngg
> > Hrm.  That's not very GNOMEy.  I would almost want to put the
> > gtk/wm/icon themes in a dialog rather than that.  The user interaction
> > there is a lot more complicated, too.
> 
> Yes, as I said in the original mail, you'd probably have to at least
> hide the whole right-hand side part by default with that design.  Which
> as you say might mean it would be better in a sub-dialog or a separate
> capplet altogether.  I doubt if we could really decide that without
> saying how many people we expect just to use Theme Sets without tweaking
> the sub-themes, and how many people we expect just to mostly ignore it
> and set all the sub-themes by hand anyway... usability study, anyone? :)

Ugh.  I need to come up with something soon.  I want to be done with
this this week.

-Jonathan