Re: Request for GNOME 2.32: Metacity 2.30.2 breaks majority of themes (patch)

[Brandon Wright <bearoso gmail com>]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Josselin Mouette <joss debian org> wrote:
> Le samedi 25 septembre 2010 à 19:35 +0200, Andre Klapper a écrit :
>> Am Samstag, den 25.09.2010, 03:08 -0500 schrieb Brandon Wright:
>> > This is regarding http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630426
>>
>> Thomas,
>> can you please branch metacity for gnome-2-32 and revert the move from
>> GDK drawing to Cairo (3608ff90798cbb6c8d88be902abd56f1a4b16bc0 /
>> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627245) in that gnome-2-32
>> branch?
>
> Furthermore it would be nice to name this release 2.32.0. It is very
> misleading to label it with a bugfix release number while rewriting
> parts of the code.
>
> Thanks,
> --
>  .''`.      Josselin Mouette

Ok, so GNOME 2.32 went and released without this being handled
completely. So the X on the close buttons of all the unchanged default
themes now have overextended lines on the right sides. This can be
fixed in a few ways:

*These two solutions also have the benefit of not affecting metacity's
existing third-party themes:
1. Revert the cairo change and put out a new tarball as was going to
be done originally.
2. Turn the antialiasing off in line-drawing. The reasoning for
supplanting existing aliased lines to add antialiased lines was
sketchy at best. My thoughts on this are in the bug (#630426). In
short, it should have been added as a _new_ function, if needed.

3. Fix the clearlooks themes in the gnome-themes module. This may
require some rethinking of the design of the X to suit the antialiased
lines. It would also remove perfect compatibility with third-party
themes.

Because the window borders are visible on nearly every window and
because they're usually only ~20 pixels wide, small discrepancies like
these make a huge difference in appearance. I realize that many
developers use OS/distribution default themes and couldn't care less,
but these are the default for GNOME--a base system that's supposed to
work on its own, and at least Fedora uses Clearlooks, and several
more. It really shows a lack of attention to detail when small, but
visible discrepancies like these are ignored for a major release. It
shows a lack of care for end-users and theme authors when you break
all their themes, too.

I've probably annoyed more than one person because of this, being
thought of as pedantic. But it seems very troublesome to me that
anyone can introduce huge changes like the cairo switch at the very
last minute (into a stable version, no less) and break the release
system so easily, and makes me have second thoughts regarding the
quality of the GNOME desktop as a whole. I've now said what I've
wanted to say, so this will be my last comment regarding the issue.

Thanks to anyone who's listening,
Brandon Wright