Re: Planning the release 2.10 of themes - part 1

[Andrew Johnson <ajgenius ajgenius us>]

On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 10:53 +0200, Luca Ferretti wrote:
> In short my proposal is: 
>      1. pack all engines we use (or we think good for users) in
>         gtk-engines 

potentially good, potentially bad.. more later. in substance I agree
though.

>      2. remove windows themes from metacity, except one, the
>         default/fallback one 

I would agree here in principle. 

>      3. pack in gnome-themes additional control options, window options
>         and icon options
> 

I think I can agree with this.

> --- Additional engines ----
> 
> A theme engine is not simply a control option. But a control option
> needs one (or more) engine to be "referenced".
> 
> A theme engine is not related to GNOME, it's related to GTK+. But GNOME
> uses it to provide control options.
> 
this isn't entirely true. theme engines can use traditionally gnome
dependencies such as gconf, and in fact for a few minor options, I plan
on adding just that too smooth. there is also the potential for adding
librsvg or libart support to an engine, which is not strictly "just"
gtk.

> So I believe that put engine code in gnome-theme package is wrong. All
> major engines should be provided by gtk-engines package.
> 

I understand why you could see this, but potential dependencies are at
issue here not just package location.

> The route is simple: 
>      1. move HC, Smooth, Thinice, Industrial (it's in
>         gnome-themes-extra), Crux, LightHouseBlue and Mist engine code
>         in gtk-engines 

Important question to consider, who will maintain this? owen has
traditionally been the maintainer of gtk-engines, but due to his other
responsibilities he has barely touched it in years, if you plan on
adding all these engines to it, you had better have a lined up a
replacement maintainer people can agree on and owen is willing to hand
the problem over too. I have contemplated seeing about taking over
myself, but regardless it should be thought about.

>      2. eventually remove Redmond95 and Metal (do we really still need
>         them?)

Redmond yes, metal no. I rewrote redmond over a year ago(hasn't made it
into gtk-engines because of owen's busy schedule). The main reason for
it is integration and familiarity. Providing a theme by default that
converts are comfortable with. For example I use redmond as a theme on
one linux box among many windows boxes, with a similar panel layout to
windows defaults, to help ease the transition for those who use it but
are used to windows. I would in fact like to have a complete Redmond
gnome theme, gtk, icon, and mcity for this reason included in
gnome-themes.

>      3. add documentation about engines for theme makers. They need to
>         know available options without read the code.
> 

This I would potentially agree with, and that is why Thomas Wood and I
have started merging things from my own wiki over to live.gnome.org in
the art.gnome.org section covering these topics.

> Put here only the engine code and a minimalistic gtkrc. You need a gtkrc
> file to make the engine available, but provide it "as is". Ideally use
> the GTK+ default colors and settings. Oh, maybe call it "xxx-engine"
> 

Maybe yes maybe no. Some engines this makes some sense for others it
doesn't, for example redmond obviously has a very specific default look,
Smooth does not. Industrial has a very specific look, but xfce does not.

Presuming a default theme for a configurable theme engine, offers more
problems with confusion then its worth. If you want to provide all major
theme engines great, but don't muddle them up with "default" themes as
well when you don't need too. 

> Why we should do it? Well, first of all to have a rational organization.
> Please note that currently Smooth engine is installed by gnome-themes
> and gnome-themes-extra too: the code in g-t-e should be older then code
> in g-t, so 'cause you typically install g-t-e after g-t, you downgrade
> Smooth engine. So if/when someone will write the Butter engine from
> Eugenia mochup, we will simply add it to gtk-engines package and upgrade
> dependences in g-t and/or g-t-e to use it.
> 
this is actually because Uraeus, the maintainer of g-t-e, has been out
and unavailable since before smooth got patched into gnome themes. He
has thus not been able to remove it from g-t-e, though he is very for
the taking industrial and smooth out of it and putting them into
gtk-engines or gnome-themes.

> Second to provide all or at least most of the cool engines of the moment
> to users. When an uses goes to art.gnome.org and downloads a control
> option based on Industrial, he don't know that Industrial could not be
> installed in him system. Of course this don't mean that we have to
> include all available engines in gtk-engines. Just the most used/popular
> in available control options in art.gnome.org
> 

I agree with this in general.

> Third to to be more friendly with non-GNOME users. A GTK+ engines don't
> depend on GNOME, it depend on GTK+. 
> 

Again, I disagree in part, namely only for my own engine Smooth, because
I plan on adding a handful of gconf settings eventually regarding
speed/eye-candy issues. Just something to think about.

Andrew Johnson