Re: Yet Another Theme Mockup

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On 15 Sep 2004, at 12:08 pm, Samuel Abels wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was playing around with a mockup and now I am wondering whether there
> is a way to actually have GTK2 draw that thing ;).
>
> http://debain.org/stuff/mockup.png
>
> I am trying to do that without using the pixmap engine. (Well, except
> for the buttons, which would still need to be taken from a pixmap).
> Using (though unfinished) the pixmap engine this was /really/ slow, 
> that
> is like >1 second to switch between notebook tabs.

The pixmap engine has never been optimised and is rather neglected as I 
understand it, which is why there are so many performance issues with 
it. The best option you have if you don't want to use the pixmap engine 
is to try and use the Smooth engine (which is highly configurable) to 
approximate your ideas.

> There is a homoeopathic amount of gradient at all backgrounds.
> Another particularly important thing is the notebook's drop-shadow and
> the treeview's in-shadow. Is there a way to do this without the
> pixmap-engine?

Not unless you write your own engine.

> Thirdly, is there a way to have GTK draw the notebook tabs with only 
> the
> leftmost and rightmost tabs rounded?

Probably not, I don't think there is any notification for GTK engines 
to determine if the tab is the last or first.

> Then, is it possible to draw the rounded listview/notebook corners?
>
> And finally, is there a way to draw a continuous background across a
> window like this?:
>
> http://debain.org/stuff/mockup2.png

You could probably set the window background, but making a metacity 
theme that exactly lines up would be tricky. Also, most windows do not 
have a single background like that, and would have a other controls on 
top which would end up making it just look ugly. Too much interest on 
the background of a window is probably not a good idea from a usability 
point of view.

Some nice ideas, but mostly impractical with the current GTK theming 
architecture. :-)

-Thomas