Future of HighContrast-SVG [was Re: Gnome-themes releases and HighContrast-SVG]

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>]

Il giorno mer, 04/10/2006 alle 14.20 +0100, Calum Benson ha scritto: 
> On 3 Oct 2006, at 15:42, Luca Ferretti wrote:
> 

> > Second: currently there are some "placeholders" (a.k.a Big, Red  
> > Dot) in
> > HighContrast-SVG. Those icons are really useful in development phase,
> > quickly showing missing images in theme. But now are really odd in
> > stable release.
> 
> Yeah, Thomas and I briefly discussed what to do about the SVG theme  
> for the stable release a couple of months ago, for this very reason.   
> But we forgot to actually make a decision (either that or I forgot  
> we'd made one), and then I went on holiday for a month and dumped the  
> release duties in his capable-but-overworked hands.  So I guess  
> that's largely my fault :/

Proposal: move it out from gnome-themes and create a new
gnome-themes-accessibility (or gnome-accessibility-themes as in Ubuntu)
module where we can develop new SVG icon themes (HighContrast and
LargePrint to start). When themes will be ready we can drop out a11y
themes from gnome-themes package (as well as move gtkrc files and
index.theme files and so on) adding gnome-accessibility-themes to GNOME
Desktop modules.

(I suspect by now we should still use HighContrast-SVG and
LargePrint-SVG names for themes)

I hope that SVG themes will replace current ones, but by now I've to
admit it's just extra stuff (missing icons in theme, missing full
support to Icon Naming Standard in applications....).

PS there was some strong reasons against the split of gnome-themes?

##################

BTW: tomorrow will be the Accessibility Summit. Can someone propose and
discuss a new Preferences->Accessibility->Appearance capplet ? The
capplet could be like this mochup[1] (yeah, it's inspired to MacOS
preferences tool).

Why should we add a new capplet just to set up themes? IMHO because a
capplet like this[1] is more useful to choose what impaired people could
need.

While we call them "themes", a11y themes aren't themes: usually you
don't change them for "pleasure", but because you _need_ to change it.

A capplet like this[1] could help to highlight the availability and the
scope of a11y themes to final users. As you can see, is more simple
choose what you need if the capplet provides a complete phrase that
describe your issue (i've difficulties with colors) then a simple name
like "HighContrast" with no suggestions or tooltips.

The capplet is also inspired by this post[2] of Peter Korn[3]: you can
break all impairments in categories (visual, physical, auditory) and
sub.categories (minor, major, severe). The proposed capplet will cover
the visual->minor category, and will be used to switch to controls for
visual->major (magnifier) and visual->severe (screen reader). I think it
could be really good for users if all a11y capplets could follow a
similar (and rationale) schema. Read Peter's post, it's really
interesting. (OK, this is not stuff for gnome-themes, list, I know)

[1]
http://digilander.libero.it/elleuca/files/accessibility-appearance.png

[2] http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20051113

[3] Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.