GUADEC Theming API meeting minutes

["Alberto Ruiz" <aruiz gnome org>]

Hi all,

this is a summary of the issues discussed and the roadmap about a new
theming API for Gtk+ at GUADEC:

Current situation:
------------------------

Misc:
  * Engines are too dependent on widget implementation details
  * Proper color inheritance for widgets (use case: slider text on
dark themes is white instead of black)
  * Color naming is highly confusing
  * Style can't be easily updated depending on different values of
properties (invisible notebook background, possible merge of scrollbar
and h/vbox widget)
  * Hard for artists to create themes right without writing an engine
  * Widgets are not transparent by default
  * The detail string is too static and once you choose one detail you
can't change it without breaking the engines

OS Integration:
  * Dynamic gtkrc properties not supported and, right now we parse
snippets on code and those strings are not updated if the engine is
changed which makes the current code quite hard to read and maintain.

Roadmap:
  * Create a CSS engine to play with it and see how far can we go with
flexibility in the artist side (Andreas to make mockups of the new
syntax and figure out how to implement it afterwards)
  * Consistency for style properties naming and using (Andreas)
  * Define what the new API should look like and see if we can come up
with something for 3.x (Benjamin and Alberto will look into this)
  * GSEAL GtkStyle members
  * Add API for dynamic rc style properties (Benjamin)
  * Define a new set of names for style colours (Andreas to select a
better naming for artists?)
  * Look at drawing widgets transparently by default and provide an
API to get the alpha mask for look and feel integration (mozilla,
swing, Qt) (Garnacho??)
  * We need a new GtkStyle object for 3.x (Benjamin and Alberto)

-- 
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz