Re: Theme support in GNOME

[Mark Finlay <sisob tuxfamily org>]

On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 02:01, Zeitgeist wrote:
> Hello;
> 
> With GNOME going the way of accessibility, usability and conformity
> (which is great BTW), I have an idea for GNOME development which may or
> may not have been discussed before.

We are and have been working on gnome themes here:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-themes-list

Please see the archives and post your comments to the list. There is
also a wiki page I created here:
http://gnomesupport.org/wiki/index.php/GnomeBeautificationPage

It has a TODO for the project.

> 
> As it is right now, there is no real "default" GNOME theme, I feel if
> GNOME was to supply just one default theme and icon set (incomplete and
> inconsistent icon sets is another problem) it would enhance usability.

Gnome comes with gnome-icon-theme and gnome-themes which means that by
default it comes with an icon theme and a handful of window manager and
gtk themes. The default gtk theme is Gnome is not afaik the same as the
default gtk theme. Also look at gnome-themes-extras for some more
excellent themes.

Ok, with the defense of Gnome done, there is quite a bit of work to be
done on the icon theme, some icons in the interface are still too
1.4-ish and some are very unusable and some are just missing. But
overall the icon theme is full of great artwork and I'm in no rush to
replace it.

As for the gtk and window manager themes - I agree the the Gnome default
is quite poor - especially when compared with Ximian, Mandrake and
Redhat/fedora. I personally use the Gnome icon theme with Industrial wm
and gtk.

I'm not as interested in this area as icons and backgrounds but I know
other people on the themes list (eg. Luca) are interested so you could
probably get a conversation going with them.

> Of course, this would take a lot of debate and deciding on what the most
> usable theme would be for the default, but I feel it would help GNOME
> out. KDE has gone the way of millions of options and I see GNOME going
> to usability and the way of the HIG.

Well you'd be surprised. I don't think that we've really gotten into an
argument about it. What *would* happen is that the themes list would
discuss it and come to a decision/recomendation and then run that by
usability@ and the maintainers.

> Themes, if a user really wants it, could be handled in a software not
> included in the default install. Microsoft Windows does this, even
> though I doubt they want it that way, but it increases usability as the
> user is not consistantly figitting with options and themes.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this - get rid of themes? naa

> That's just my 2 cents and hopefully this topic will generate some good
> discussion.

I think that desktop-devel is bored of theme talk by now, the themes
list is the place to be.

-- 
Mark Finlay 
Computer Science Student

E-Mail:	sisob_AT_tuxfamily_DOT_org
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 	http://advogato.org/person/sisob