Re: My GEP 2 (metatheme) thoughts

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 06:35, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> 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?
 
That seems like an equitable solution. Sorry, I must have missed reading
a couple messages. This thread is rather long, and I'm not finding your
specific comments addressed to my mockup; I'd be happy to address them
(willing to resend them to me or the list?).

-Seth