Re: Clarius

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

On 8/28/06, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> The default theme for 2.16 has been changed from Clearlooks
> to Clarius.  This is apparently just Clearlooks without the
> glossy scrollbars.
>
> Rant the first:  This change was made on August 8th:
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/libgnome/schemas/desktop_gnome_interface.schemas.in?rev=1.26&view=log
>
> That's after every freeze we have except the hard code freeze.

Actually, checking the timestamp after following the link, it was made
at Mon Aug 7 23:40:35 2006 UTC, which was before the string freeze
assuming the libgnome release was made within about 20 minutes.  (In
this case, there were additional other libgnome issues, though, so
Thomas asked the release-team for a short extension on irc)  It was,
however, after string change announcement period had started.

> And yet, I saw no discussion or announcement on d-d-l or the
> documentation list.  Yes, even the name of the default theme
> is a big deal.  What is so hard about keeping us informed?

I had been under the impression that it was the same theme with a
different name (and even glossed over that detail with the other
issues that were brought up at the time).  I probably should have
checked closer.  And I didn't think about how it would affect the
schema, so when Thomas mentioned it on irc and in email
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2006-August/msg00060.html),
I forgot to mention that it needed to be announced.  So, I'm at least
partially at fault.  Sorry about that.

> Rant the second:  What's the point of the name change, really?
> The Clearlooks theme isn't even in CVS anymore:
>
> http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-themes/gtk-themes/Clearlooks/
>
> So we're only installing Clarius with gnome-themes.  How does
> dropping the glossy blue scrollbars constitutes a name change?
> Those glossy blue scrollbars weren't even in the old Clearlooks
> that I originally pushed through as the new default theme some
> release cycles back.
>
> I'm going to coin a new term: key churn.  This is when people
> make frivolous and unnecessary changes to GConf keys or their
> default values.  It sucks for large deployments.  Gnome is
> bigger than your personal desktop.

"key churn" --  I like that.  So, what suggested changes do people
have to prevent problems for large deployments?  Can you comment here
as well, Thomas?