Re: A question of themes

[Mark <jamess1 wwnet com>]

delmar watkins wrote:
> 
> I have a question (or two) that has been bouncing around in my head for the
> past few days...
> 
> Is there a gnome/gtk theme generator?

Not that I'm aware of.

> If not, why?

Probably because there is a lot more important things to work on, and
also themeing is not too difficult once you know what to do. I agree
that it would be a nice thing to have. There is a program made by Ximian
(Helix Code) called meta-theme. I haven't used it, so I'm not sure
exactly what it does but it might be the type of program your thinking
of.

> and if so, where is
> it?   Very often I f=pick a theme and then go, "OH dang it, they use
> diamonds for radio buttons" or whatever... why can't we make our own, kinda
> like in the windows world?  In windows, or Mac, you can define all of your
> colours, etc.  In the GTK world, you would have to add the functionality of
> what kind of buttons (radio, checkboxes, etc) that you use, but I don't see
> that as being difficult...

It's important to recognize the two main type of gtk themes, theme
engines, and pixmap based themes (which do in turn use a special theme
engine). In theme engines it is impossible to change how something is
drawn, unless the theme engine has an explicit option for that widget.
Pixmap based themes on the other hand, draw from user specified images,
so in this case it is possible to mix and match pixmaps.

> 
> To further the idea, I was thinking about the icons idea I had a while
> back:  not only could you define your theme, but also how the icons look.
> Why not make all of the icons render through gimp.  Then, have parameters
> that you can change for each icons:  the perspecitive (flat, tilted, etc.),
> light source (top, bottom, left, right, etc.), staturation, effects/filter
> (neon, crystal, etc), etc. etc.  So basically, all artists would have to do
> is make FLAT icons with NO perspecitve, shadows, etc, and then let gimp
> render out the USER defined icon when they first see it.

If it is done that should go directly in the gimp, or at least be a
plugin. That would help the artist a great deal in producing uniform
icon sets, and probably save a lot of time too in making modifications
or variations. However, I don't see how it's that usefull for a user to
directly manipulate the artwork in gnome. Also I don't think such a
complex renderer should be a dependency or go directly in gnome. Let
gnome have the ability to use arbitrary icons sets, and that should be
fine.

Mark