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Re: [gdm-list] BORDER element in the greeter.dtd


Dave:

I hope this isn't a bother, but I cc:ed the gdm-list since I go into
a lot of detail about work that could be done in the greeter code, I
think the larger gdm community might benefit from this overview.
Here is the latest, and I believe final changes for the greeter.dtd. The changes to the dtd file will bring it up to date with the code. I previously posted them to the list but I thought that may be a little much so I am just sending my final update to you. 

Thanks so much for updating the gdmgreeter DTD file.  It is nice that the
DTD file finally has been given some love.  Do the existing themes now
conform to this DTD without any warnings or errors?
If you would like I am willing to take on the the maintenance of the greeter.dtd file and the GDM default themes. I know in the overall scheme of the GNOME GDM project these are insubstantial items, however my taking them may lift a small amount of work from someone else. 

I would love for someone to be more involved in this area of the code.
I'm a bit unsure, though, about what you are wanting to maintain.  Are
you wanting to maintain just the existing themes, or also related
gdmgreeter maintenance and enhancements.  For example, do you plan on
enhancing the theme to have new keys/elements and then updating the
gdmgreeter source code to have those new enhancements?

Here are some ideas of things in the greeter that would be useful to
get done:

1) The DTD probably should contain more comments explaining how to
   actually define a theme, and the existing docs in docs/C/gdm.xml
   are poor.  Although the docs do list out what the different tags
   and elements means, there are not really many examples nor an
   overview helping people know how to go about putting together a
   theme.

2) The existing themes could use some design love.  As I've added new
   features to the greeter.xml I add them as examples to the default
   themes.  This means that the default themes have two methods for
   selecting language/session (the combobox and the dialog).  Might
   be better if different themes showed off different features?

   Also I think the overall design of the existing default themes could
   be improved and made to look nicer, more modern, etc.

3) Add new themes.  GDM could use some cooler more modern theming.

If you want to dig into the code more, then greeter-parser.c is the
file which parses the theme XML file.  There are already many bug reports
at bugzilla.gnome.org where people would like to see new capabilities
that could be added to the XML file and the parser.  And there is the
obvious work of making such new configuration options actually change
gdmgreeter's behavior.

The existing XML parsing code is a bit old, and there might be better
approaches to parsing the XML.  This area of the code could probably
use a rewrite.  Might be nice to make it a GObject so that if other
greeters want to have XML parsing, it is easy to share the code
across greeters.  Have something like a greeter base object class
that knows how to do common things (rather than having the existing
common library).

One common complaint about the greeter is that it doesn't support
enough flashy bling.  Perhaps the XML file could be enhanced to support
transition effects?

The gnome-canvas dependency would be nice to get rid of.  Probably
would be good to replace canvasy things with cairoy things.  Then
we could probably do more cool blingy transitions.

Because the text (label) regions in the gdmgreeter are not real GtkText
widgets like GtkLabel, they are not currently accessible so programs
like orca don't have the ability to read PAM error/warning messages.
This really makes gdmgreeter hard to use for people with certain
accessibility problems.  Currently we recommend that such users
use gdmlogin which uses real GtkWidgets.  Fixing this in gdmgreeter
would remove the last big problems area and we could start recommending
gdmgreeter to users with such accesibility needs.  Also, there are bugs
with GOK working with gdmgreeter.  A while back I modified gdmgreeter
so it uses real GtkButtons instead of using canvas areas that respond
to mouse clicks.  This made the buttons accessible, and that work is
probably very similar to the work needed to fix the text problem also.
So if someone wanted to work on this, reviewing that patch would be
a good starting place to understand the scope of the problem.  Refer
to the ChangeLog.

Another big issue is that gdmgreeter and gdmlogin do not yet work in
the gdm-gobject branch where we are trying to get GDM to use D-Bus.
Helping in this area would, perhaps be, the most important thing to
accomplish at the moment.  But this might not be the area you want
to work in?

I believe there are bugs in bugzilla for all these issues (and more), but
these I think are the most important things to think about.

I'm not sure how far you want to dig into things, but hopefully this
gives you some ideas of how you could involve yourself, and perhaps
give others ideas of how to participate in this area of the code.
If there is a different process by which you would like to have these updates done or recommended, or you would like to have more information please let me know. 

As I said, I'd be curious to know more specifically what you are interested
in doing.  I'd recommend that if you put together some code that makes GDM
work better, submit it as an enhancement request to bugzilla.gnome.org in
the "gdm" category, and attach the patch.  You can also send patches to
the gdm-list gnome org if that is easier for you.  But it's good to track
changes in bugzilla.

Brian



*/Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>/* wrote:


    Finchair:

    I believe the "border" element in the greeter.dtd is in error. Looking
    at greeter-parser.c, which parses the greeter theme XML file, it clearly
    doesn't process this element at all. In fact, the greeter code doesn't
    reference anything that seems to relate to borders being
    configurable via
    XML at all. The ChangeLog doesn't reference any past support for this
    element. It's probably right to remove this.

    In fact, I'd bet the DTD hasn't been updated for some of the new
    features
    that the greeter supports. I'd bet the default circles/happygnome themes
    probably don't validate against this DTD. If someone wanted to clean up
    the DTD and make it more up-to-date, that would be great. I'd happy
    accept
    any fixes to it upstream - including removing this unused "border"
    element.

    Brian


     > Can someone explain the usage of the element in the greeter.dtd
     > file. I have done some experimentation and have been unable to
    get any
     > results when using it. I have been unable to find any reference
    the the
     > element in any of the documentation and even google has been
    useless. :-)
     >
     > Is this possibly a discontinued element left only for backwards
     > compatibility?
     >
     > Thanks,
     > Finchair
     >
     >
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