Re: My GEP 2 (metatheme) thoughts

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM> writes:
> OK, I think this is the crux of the disagreement.
> 
> Seth seems to be suggesting a rewrite of the existing theme capplet, 
> to simplify and unify it.  On the other hand I believe that the
> GEP-2 is about a new capability,

Wait, remember the reason we wanted to go to a requirements GEP was
that we didn't want the GEP to presuppose that we were adding a
capplet or which capplets we were adding or what. The question to
establish in a requirements GEP is what we're trying to do.
 
> it does not sound to me as though Seth's proposals (with regard to
> Theme changes) address this GEP's requirements or intent.
> 

I don't really understand what you guys are arguing about or why you
both think the two things are inherently different. Can you
bullet-point in concrete detail why Seth's proposed control panel
doesn't do what you need for this GEP?

My understanding is that the main feature being sought is
"metathemes," that is, downloading/installing/creating/using a single
theme that happens to change multiple aspects of your desktop (with
nautilus, gtk, qt, etc. themes as implementation details).  This is
mostly about a nice end-user feature - so they can download and
install a comprehensive theme such as "Space" or "Barbie" or whatever
that dresses up the whole desktop. But should also be useful for
accessibility.

So to me Seth's proposal does that, and does it by a) simplifying our
current UI - instead of adding another control panel, it makes an
existing one simpler and b) making our current UI more powerful, as
it's still possible to change individual component themes, but now you
can also bundle them up, and rapidly change between different
combinations.

So simpler, more powerful, both at once - you don't get that often.  I
really like the proposal.

I do have a lot of questions about it, which I sent out in an earlier
mail, but there was no real reply to most of them.

Anyway, what concretely is missing in the mockups Seth posted?  Is it
just whether the metatheme includes font/background?  Would the
"Automatically apply suggested font/background" checkbox I suggested
solve this problem?

Havoc