Re: GNOME Beautification the technical aspect

[Francis Whittle <fudje phreaker net>]

I believe 108533, 105316 are actually a difficulty with how GTK+ works 
with librsvg - ie. Vector Graphics are rendered once at the image-
specfied size and are then scaled as pixbufs.

96988 appears to have nothing to do with theming... What did you list 
it for?

106685 is certainly relevant though.  I personally think that there 
should be a stock 'throbber' icon.  This would probably have to wait 
for a later release of GTK+ though.
109465 makes no sense.  They're just compressed XML files right?  
libXML should be able to handle that?!
Can't comment on 106459
106684 Looks evil and in need of work from nautilus.

Have I got that mostly right?

While we're on the topic of the technical aspects, I might raise the 
issue here first of the amount of control that a theme can have over 
the desktop layout (as opposed to the widgets and icons).
As far as I'm aware, at the current point in time the amount of control 
a themer has over this is naught.  There are of course a lot of 
positive aspects of this, but I suspect that an ability to change 
desktop layout in some theming method would be a user-friendly 
addition;  A user new to configurable environments (such as someone 
migrating from Windows or MacOS) is not likely to want to spend a lot 
of time configuring their desktop just how they like it, and may find 
the requirement to do this daunting.  I believe that a useful feature 
would be an ability to change a desktop to a preset layout that had 
been designed by someone used to working in and theming the environment 
and was immediately usable at the click of a button.  So, for example, 
someone could choose a MacOS type layout if they were comfortable with 
Mac and be immediately presented with a menu at the top and a 'dock' 
type thing et c., or a Windows immmigrant could select a Windows-like 
theme and have immediate access to a taskbar at the bottom with a foot 
menu.  And expanding on that someone could see a layout they like the 
look of and have an immediate similar design without having to drag 
panels around and insert panel artefacts where needed for about an hour 
(unskilled people, remember).  Of course, the option to have a 100% 
custom unique dekstop would have to be present as well, and this would 
probably be a next-major-release feature if it were to be implemented - 
It would take a lot of work to implement something like that and quite 
a lot of input from the people who would be designing desktops.
The question I ask here (and the reason I raise here first) is:  Would 
the GNOME theming community be willing to design themes for such a 
layout theming engine?

Assessing that paragraph, the other question would be, should I have 
TLP'd that?

Francis

On 2003.06.14 03:12, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> Hi,
> While improving icons and themes is nice I think we also need to
> heighten the focus and awareness in the community on the technical
> issues that is still hampering the visual quality and power of GNOME.
>
> When making my metathemes I have tried to be good about filing bugs on
> issues I find and give the maintainers and contributors a tap on the
> shoulder to try and raise the priority of such bugs.
>
> If anyone on this list is willing to try and make patches that would
> of
> course also be a great help in this regard.
>
> A small section of theme and look related bugs that I am aware of:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108533
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105316
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=114706
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96988
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106685
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109465
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106459
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106684
>
> --
> Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-themes-list mailing list
> gnome-themes-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-themes-list

--
Francis James Whittle <fudje phreaker net>
No webpage as yet, but coming as soon as I can afford hosting.
Bachelor of Software Engineering Student (1st year), ANU