Re: [gdm-list] face-browser proposal for new gdm

[Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>]

Le vendredi 23 novembre 2007 à 11:08 -0600, Brian Cameron a écrit :
> Matthias/Frederic/Others:
> 
> >>> But finding this
> >>> "Theme-support was based on a XML-file in the old gdm. This should be
> >>> taken over to the new gdm."
> >>> in the text has me concerned. I hope you don't mean that the new greeter should
> >>> read the same xml format that the current greeter was using for themes ?
> >>> Getting rid of that format is one of my personal hopes for a new greeter...
> >> Well, I must say I seriously hope the xml format will be kept.
> >>
> >> It is one of the few things which allows us to have almost the same
> >> greeter theme file between kdm and gdm. It would be a pity to loose it
> >> (and even more to not be able to have a graphically appealing and
> >> themable greeter).
> > 
> > I'd propose to have a little poll among the people who have to tweak
> > the various distros gdm themes regularly. I can only say that from my 
>  > own experience, and from sitting next to Ray, the format is not 
> well-loved...
> 
> It can be frustrating to create a good theme, and there are bugs.
> However, I suspect many users do enjoy using the various themes that
> are available - and the ability to (reasonably) easily customize themes
> to their linking.

Yes, even if gdmgreeter syntax isn't perfect, we are still able to
create nice themes and non programmer can create such themes (just look
at http://art.gnome.org/themes/gdm_greeter/ )


>  > The format also has limitations that make many interesting designs
>  > impossible to implement (e.g. the fact that size-changes of elements
>  > at runtime are very poorly handled, leading to broken situations when
>  > translated strings vary in size). The implementation on top of
>  > GnomeCanvas has serious drawbacks, e.g. for accessibility.
> 
> True, there has been talk of moving to something more sophisticated such
> as cairo.  I'm sure there are other bugs also.
> 
> > I believe the current thinking wrt to themable greeters is to offer a
> > sane dbus interface that facilitates writing alternative greeters 
>  > rather than offering explicit theming support.
> 
> For some situations, it perhaps makes sense to "write your own greeter"
> to make it look the way you want (if you wanted to depend on new
> interfaces, such as an OpenGL greeter, for example).
> 
> However, suggesting that they need to write a new greeter application to
> change the appearance isn't a great solution for theming/skin changing.
> While the XML format may not be perfect, it works for most situations
> reasonably and there are plenty of themes that work with it.

This is exactly what I was trying to say, but you said it much more
clearly :)

-- 
Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>
Mandriva