Re: GNOME 2.0 Must Fix - Sawfish

[Brian Crescimanno <darksheer fotographix com>]

On Wed, 2001-09-05 at 22:59, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On 05Sep2001 06:24PM (-0700), Kenny Graunke wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > http://boom.whitecape.org/Fixes/sawfish.html has draft 2 of the
sawfish must
> > fix list. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
> >
> 
> Man, I knew I shouldn't have subscribed to this list, I just can't
> stop having opinions. 
> 
> The proposal is a mixture of specific individual suggestions and a
> suggestion to use the Klarth theme as the default. I'll put in my two
> cents about the Klarth theme and then comment on the individual
> suggestions (many of which I like).
> 
> My main comment about the Klarth theme is that while it may have some
> usability improvements compared to Crux, it does not look as good. In
> particular it doesn't match the Crux Gtk+ theme (as seen in the
> screenshot), although I don't know if that's a big deal. I suspect it
> also wouldn't match the default Gtk theme very well either. The main
> problem is that in Klarth tthe title bar and buttons have gradients
> and edges that make them appear to indent in slightly, while in crux
> gtk everything bulges out slightly. The combination is not so good. Of
> course, I am a bit biased because the Crux Gtk and Sawfish theme
> combination is the first and only one ever to make me forget that the
> window manager is a separate program. 

Agreed.  Klarth is a really cool theme, and goes pretty well with
Crux...but if it is to be the default theme, a completely matching GTK
theme should be created.  However, as Dekar referenced on IRC tonight,
here's a screenshot that makes it match a bit better with Crux:

http://runic.whitecape.org/the-gimp-with-klarth.png

> I also don't like the fact that the whole title bar is colored with
> the selection color. Is there a reason this is useful? It's kind of
> visual overkill.

I kind of agree with mjs on this one, though I kinda like this "all
blue" thing I have going on. :)

> Now onto comments about the specific suggetsions (some of which I
> think we should try to apply to the Crux sawfish theme).
> 
> * Respecting Gtk theme colors: good
> * Title bar height adjusting for font: good
> * button order: good
> * button graphics being [+] [-]   [x] : good (wow, I can't stop
agreeing here)

I definately cannot agree more with these issues.  

> * More flexibility in choosing button order: this may be good, but
> only if we dump a bunch of the other current sawfish settings from the
> control center; there's too many right now to add something that takes
> that much screen space

I like the way KDE handles this (and Dekar referenced this in his
document).  I think a similar set of preferences should be a part of
this..but that's a sawfish fix...

> * Window shading: sounds fine.
> 
> * button states changing: I suggest the default theme not provide a
> way to vertical-only or horizontal-only maximize, as this is a
> confusing feature and and worse yet makes the maximize button have
> four different states.

Amen.


> * buttons taking filling the full titlebar height: I think the
> usability argument for this is spurious, given the fact that on MacOS
> 9, MacOS X, Win9x, etc the button does not take the full height and I
> don't hear about a lot of users accidentally closing windows. Most
> windows that are dangerous to close will ask for confirmation (web
> browser windows being one admitted exception).
> 
> Having the button take the full height looks worse, and does not as
> strongly convey the fact that it is a button. Also, you don't need to
> make the window resizable from the corner closest to the close button
> just because the button does not take the full height. In fact, this
> is not the case on MacOS X or MacOS classic (they both provide a large
> and obvious resize affordance in the lower right corner of the window;
> I'm not sure how easy that is to do on the X window system given how
> window managers work.

I must say, I'm split on this issue.  *shrug*

> * resize handles: the top border should be a resize handle! Otherwise
> it's unnecessarily complicated to resize windows downwards. The
> corners adjacent to the top side are debatable for reasons cited but
> surely the top edge is uncontroversial.

I cannot agree more.

> * Resize handles on maximized windows: this is debatable, but how
> about leaving them in and automatically turning off the maximized
> state for the window if the user resizes it? I personally would find
> it convenient at times to make a window full screen, and then resize
> it to somewhat smaller without having to do a separate unmaximize step
> first.


Hrmm...I think the whole concept of maximizing a window is to make it
full screen...if you want a large window, just resize it to begin
with...but that's just me.


> * context menus: maybe we should have this off by default. No major
> mainstream GUI has a window manager context menu. Perhaps there should
> be an advanced setting to turn it on.

agreed.

Brian