Alternative way to implement application styles

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

Got this idea several years ago ..
Sorry, this isn't my native language..

Imagine an application with edit or presentation capabilities similar to paper and pencil. This kind of application is a square tingy on the screen.

Imagine an application which play back music files, something similar to CD's. This too is a square tingy on the screen with the same colours and buttons.

Imagine an administration tool on the same machine. You gessed it. That to is a square tingy looking exactly like the other two!

There are a small set of different top level windows (good enough explanation for now) and the window managers uses this info to present them with different styles. Could it be possible to somehow tell the window manager or whatever other system there are that "I'm a wizzard or I'm a gizmo, decorate me". That way there could be a small set of styles.

Of course each and everyone would want to use something special but if special services become available then it would be very tempting to use those predefined styles. A service for a style could be docking in larger areas, an other could be a Mac-like menubar for an editor. Not so obvious services are protected windows that can't be overlaid, tiling, accelerator keys that starts the application and all that stuff you don't want to code into the application yet need so badly.

Some predefined styles could be a white-paper style for gedit and kwrite, a canvas style for gimp and kdraw, some kind of gadget style for gcom and gcd.

I gess there is a discussion lurking about cascading styles but this isn't the primary problem.

(Seeking shelter for flame wars if I have missed something obvious..)

John Erling Blad
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