Re: why so few themes are shipped with gnome-1.4?

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On 1 Mar 2001, Owen Taylor wrote:

> 
> Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com> writes:
> 
> > Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru> writes:
> > 
> > >  Hi, 
> > > 
> > >  I wonder why almost no gtk themes are shipped with gnome-1.4? The package
> > > gtk-engines provides only about 5 engines (libraries that are used by themes),
> > > and a one sample theme for each of them. 
> > >  I think the themes is the one of the biggest advantages of gtk, why be shy
> > > and only provide only few themes, 3 of which look boring like win95? I just
> > > don't understand this, guys. By sparing one extra MB of packaged themes the
> > > user will have two dozen themes to choose from.. I also suggest to add a
> > > couple of unusable, but stunning themes just for completness and for pride of
> > > gnome users.
> > > 
> > >  What do you think?
> > > 
> > 
> > I think it would be cool if for GNOME 1.4.1 we included some of the
> > nicer themes out htere (Crux, ThinIce, etc) in the fifth toe release.
> 
> Creating a gtk-engines-extra for fifth toe doesn't sound like a horrible
> idea to me (though I don't have time to do it), and long term, I
> wouldn't mind seeing gtk-engines expanded a bit.
> 
> The problems here though are:
> 
>  - Many themes (though perhaps not crux or thinice) do bad hacks
>    that will cause crashes and bad interactions with other themes.
>    These are not suitable for inclusion in gtk-engines or 
>    GNOME at all (even though gtk-engines includes one with the
>    metal theme...)
> 
>  - Selection is a problem; like GIMP plugins and panel applets,
>    there are an almost infinite number, shading from very 
>    nice to absolutely useless.
> 
>  - Maintainence is a problem; like GIMP plugins and panel applets,
>    authors tend to disappear and code tends to rot.

 I think there is no need to add more gtk engines - all that can be added is
new gtk themes that use already existing engines (mostly Pixmap-based themes -
they look nice). So, no additional code to be added - just more gtkrc's,
pixmaps and READMEs - nothing to rot.
 So, we can have several packages - gtk-pixmap-themes (themes for pixmap,
usually rather big) and gtk-simple-themes (that fiddle only with colors, no
pixmaps, or use pixmap engine only for checkboxes and other very small
elements).

 But yes, selection is a problem. I just suggest to include several dark gtk
themes too (since majority will vote for themes with bright-background).

> Perhaps before every GNOME release, we need to have people
> vote for 10 favorite themes, and we can combine those with a 
> some "editors choices" into a package for the release or something...

 It would be nice to bump from 10 to 25 at least IMO. And gtk.themes.org
already gathers statistics on most frequently downloaded theme, best theme
according to votes, etc - all we have is to repackage themes from there.

> Regards,
>                                         Owen

 Best regards,
  -Vlad