Re: Talk to the Clearlooks maintainers

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 10:49 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Shaun McCance">
> 
> > Well, the new Clearlooks entails both the Cairo-enabled Clearlooks engine
> > in gtk-engines and the Clearlooks theme data in gnome-themes.  Both the
> > engine and the theme data have changed.  The theme data is probably
> > setting a few things that are new to the engine, but most notably, it's
> > using a brigher and more saturated set of colors.
> > 
> > Both the engine and the theme data are responsible for point (b).  The
> > engine is responsible for point (a).
> 
> Let's take the bike-shedding about Clearlooks elsewhere. If you have a point
> of view for the maintainers, please state it to the maintainers so they can
> take it into account. A desktop-devel-list discussion without them involved
> is not useful to anyone.

I wasn't aware they weren't involved in the discussion.
I generally assume that maintainers are subscribed to
desktop-devel-list.

I don't think this email was bike-shedding at all.  Maybe
some of my other posts were, but certainly not this one.
This was purely informative, not argumentative.

The discussion is happening on desktop-devel-list because
it affects the entire desktop.  Just like we'd use this
list if there were a proposed API change in a module in
the desktop.

> An important point: We chose Clearlooks as the default theme for GNOME. It's
> a great theme, and improving both technically and lickably under the great
> maintainership of Richard and Daniel. Let's trust them to be the arbiters of
> taste for our default theme! ... and if anyone has input into that process,
> it should be through the maintainers.

Maintainers certainly have the final say on what happens
in their modules, but they should listen to the concerns
of the rest of the developers, particularly when changes
in their own modules affect other parts of the desktop.
It's what makes this a real group project, rather than
a random collection of programs.

We chose Clearlooks (and by "we", I mean "I") because it
offered an attractive alternative to the ugly old default
theme which didn't bombard the user with too much flash.
We (I) selected a new selection color at the time, for
a number of good reasons, not the least of which is that
bright selection backgrounds are difficult for the vast
swathes of people whose vision isn't absolutely perfect.
It's not simply a matter of taste.

The theme we have now is a fundamentally different beast
from the Clearlooks we selected as the new default last
release cycle.  There's no question that it's become more
lickably delicious, but it isn't even close to the same
theme.  Using it is basically tantamount to changing the
default theme again.

--
Shaun