Installing themes from art.gnome.org via gnome-theme-manager

[Thomas Wood <thos thos me uk>]

In the efforts to make GNOME theming easier, especially in regards to
those from art.gnome.org so as to make a.g.o the definitive source of
GNOME themes, we have decided it would be to our advantage to
incorporate better installation of themes so as to be able to integrate
easy install of themes directly from a.g.o. Currently, installing themes
from art.gnome.org is a two step (or more) process that requires first
downloading the theme, then installing it, then switching to that theme
and as a result of bugs in system tar, or in the theme manager itself,
even this is not a hiccup free process. To overcome this, at least in
part , a lot of modern programs (such as winamp, mozilla and others)
allow the user to download, install and even switch to themes from a
website in a single step process by a common extension which the program
is associated with. I propose we make it easier for people to install
themes by doing this to GNOME themes, by changing the usual .tar.gz
extension to a special extension and having the theme manager associated
with these files so that it can "open" and install them. I believe this
would be the simplest solution. So for instance with a proposed new
layout on a.g.o, the user would go to the Details->Controls section,
click on "Install" of a theme they would like, and the theme-manager
would auto-download the file, properly extract to the valid locations;
and then prompt the user as to if they would like to apply the said
theme now. 

1. Extension
This could be something like .theme or perhaps .gtheme, or anything else we all agree is appropriate.

2. Naming convention
At art.gnome.org we currently prefix all themes with their theme type. For example, GDM themes are prefixed with "GDM-" and Metacity with "MCity-". We feel this brings some consistency to the file names and helps separate them. This could be included in some specification if necessary. So as to allow the theme manager to know by the file name where to extract said theme.

3. Internals
This can either be left much as it is done in the theme tarballs now, or could be changed, although i don't see much need. Basically the structure is:

theme_name
  |- index.theme
  |- <gtk>
  |- <gtk-2.0>
  |- <metacity-1>
  |- <scalable>
  |- <48x48> ... and other icon theme related directories

4 Implementation
Essentially the theme manager would be associated with this type of file, and would install it in much the same as it does currently. What type of compression to use is an issue (gz or bz2) and how this would work on for instance a solaris machines would also have to be adressed (apparently solaris tar is different from gnu tar). And we should as stated, also have some sort of message dialog asking the user if they would like to apply now etc..


Comments?


ps. Please throw insults at ajgenius as to the lengthy-ness of some sentances in this proposal, as they where his idea.