Re: A question of themes

["David Grega" <webmaster overtech zzn com>]

I have to agree, we need themes.  However, we must be sure not to make theme
making too hard.  Also, we should make sure that we comply with recognized
theme standards as not to agrivate anyone.  If KDE already has such a
feature, it would not be a bad idea to create a converter to convert those
themes over to use for GNome.

Going further, we should allow the author to specify if their themes can be
edited by third parties.   If a theme is editable, there should be some
safeguard so that if the user wants to undo changes they or another user did
to their work, they can restore from some sort of backup.

This will also draw more popularity to GNome.  If companies can make money
selling items (in this case, non-editable themes) for GNome they'll sell
those items and more users will switch to GNome.  Sure, there is no such
thing as 100% security, especially with themes which could simply be caught
on a screenshot - but we should keep the permission of editing themes in the
hands of the author of the theme.

- David Grega

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark" <jamess1 wwnet com>
To: <gnome-gui-list gnome org>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: A question of themes


> 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
>
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