Re: themes bust it up...

[Sean Thomas Middleditch <sean middleditch iname com>]

> > > I repeat my earlier statement, spend a few days with each, and choose
> > > whichever suits you best. GNOME-compliant themeable choices include:
> >
> > > Window maker
> >
> >       Why do people continue to suggest Window Maker, even though using
> > it breaks Gnome?
> >
> >       (Paraphrased from memory:) "Gnome has detected that the Panel is
> > already running.  Should I start another instance of the Panel?"  ...in
> > addition to all the other problems caused by duplicated session management
> > (apps starting up twice, or X starting with no WM at all, or the Config
> > Utility showing the wrong WM as the currently selected one, etc.)

Actually, a well written Window Manager will work great with GNOME.  You see,
GNOME themes aren't GNOME themes... they're GTK themes.  So, if the window
manager uses GTK, then it will change along with the "GNOME" theme.  Since
GTK doesn't deal with Window borders, it would however not change stuff like
placement of buttons/behaviour, etc.

Something I thought of would be either
a) have a GTK-based window manager that can detect which GTK theme is in use
and look in a list of window manager themes, and if it finds one with a
matching name, use that, else use a default (and allow the user to change this
behaviour, in case they want a specific window manager theme independent of
GTK theme) or
b) allow a GTK theme to come along with a file that a list of arbitrary data (a
simple config file), that window managers could use.  A "window manager
enabled" theme, for example, could have an entry in the file like
[window manager]
border_color=blue
button_close_loc=right
etc.  Whatever.  The WM spec could cover that if it was adopted, I guess.  A
window manager could use this info, or again use a default if it is unavailable
or invalid.

I'm not quite sure why that e-mail prompted me into those idea, but oh well.
;-)


Sean Middleditch