Re: Themes and default fonts....

[raster rasterman com]

On  3 Dec, Jim Gettys scribbled:
->  I've been wandering through the 1.9C spec recently: I hope to post
->  detailed comments next week.
->  
->  What I did not see, however, disturbs me:
->  
->  Both Gnome and KDE have facilities for "themes" and default font selection, 
->  and dynamically changing these in running applications (I applaud the 
->  improvement over Xt!!!)
->  
->  However, the reality of the situation is that I (and most people) use
->  applications from at least 4 environments:
->  	1) the "legacy" environment of Motif/CDE/Xt toolkits
->  	2) Gnome
->  	3) KDE
->  	4) your window manager of choice.
->  
->  Now, I think we all agree we're jointly well on the way to making 1) go
->  away, though I also suspect that alot of applications that get ported
->  from UNIX to Linux over the next year or two may be based on Motif/CDE
->  and/or Xt.
->  
->  This is still leaving an end user with a "mess".
->  
->  In order to get the applications set up with the look and fonts I want,
->  I get to go play with:
->  	1) control panel from KDE
->  	2) control panel from Gnome
->  	3) whatever control panel the window manager has.
->  
->  And Enlightement and Gnome, which I happen to use as my default environment 
->  (maybe I should switch monthly, so no one thinks I'm taking sides here; 
->  I certainly have both installed on my machines), it seems strange to have 
->  to mess with both independently to change theme and/or fonts.
->  
->  This "sucks big time", to use the vernacular.
->  
->  
->  I think a proper goal is to enable gnome and KDE apps to be used
->  in either environment interchangably (we're stronger together than
->  divided), and we can do better than this:
->  
->  So, I strongly believe there should be:
->  	1) some way to notify apps what theme has been selected by the
->  user (under whatever control panel (s)he likes.  I bet, once the mechanism
->  gets built, that there will be some attempt to make at least some subset
->  of the space of all possible themes roughly similar between the toolkits
->  in use.  This can be done in a very simple way: you can leave it
->  to the toolkits to do as best they can to match themes (and have a simple
->  substitution table, saying, for example, if the user wants "gnome blue ice",
->  I'll use "kde ice blue" or some such.  I think a very simple protocol
->  is in order here.
->  	2) similarly, some way to set the fonts to be used by the window
->  manager and/or toolkits between toolkits.
->  In the past, this level of customization was done by the Xrm facilities:
->  this continues to be a viable option as far as I'm concerned.  I know
->  that some of you don't like the Xrm stuff, (in large part, I think because
->  it got "overused" in Xt days as the only mechanism for customization)
->  and other solutions are possible.  My personal recommendation is to
->  use the Xrm facilities by defining particular resources, using
->  it in the more constrained way I, at least, thought it was going to
->  be used along time ago, rather than the overuse that it seems to have done.
->  
->  
->  	It does have one virtue you need to think about: X is network
->  transparent, and when I run an application remotely, it doesn't
->  necessarily have access to your home directory.  I believe application
->  servers are again going to be very important in the "new world" being built,
->  so I personally don't like solutions that don't work when I run remote
->  apps without access to my file store.
->  
->  I did not see anything in the window manager spec to deal with these
->  issues.

Actually originally me and Matthias when talking - Matthias suggested a
nice set of properties that defneid a set of colours for a theme - and
i cant rememebr but it did include fonts too.

so a WM or an app coudl chnage this/these properties and everyone is
listeing for porperty changes - if properties change - re-read and do
your best to comply.

it involed some foregroudn and backgorudn colours for windows, buttons,
list areas, treoughs etc.

also it'd be a good idea to add some extra user preferences liek
scrollbar position, arrow positions, etc. if the toolkit cant doit -
well then it cant do it. but if it can it can try and comply.

sicne anyown can change the properties... any configuration tool coudl
be used to chnage them - so chose your favoprite way of chnagung theme
(be it a WM menu that executes a samall program that just sets tmem
manually or the wm's theme choser, or gnomes theme choser or setings
choser, or kde's control panel or whatever - chsoe one then stick to
it).

it coudl be expanded to incldue images for butotns, textures too - but
the onyl sane way woudl be to use paths that woudl possibly be:
machine.name:/path/to/image.png[0,0,0,0,100x100]
where machine.name is the machine its on, the path - well the path, and
the [] stuff are image parameters - the first 4 are border scaling
values (useful for butotns images) and the last is scaling 0x0 means
tile, 100x100 means fully scale to fit...

that should be enough to start - if the app is remote and knwos its not
on the same machine.. well - it will have tomake do with a fallback
mechanism.

it can be done and it sounds useful. we will need to allow for lots fo
expansion in thsi area in futre due toi new widgets, concepts and
abilites.



->  Am I missing something?  Should I retreat to my cave now?
->  
->  So my goal here is simple: make the end user's life much simpler in
->  this brave new world you all are building...
->  				- Jim Gettys
->  
->  
->  
->  --
->  Jim Gettys
->  Technology and Corporate Development
->  Compaq Computer Corporation
->  jg@pa.dec.com
->  
->  

-- 
--------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster@rasterman.com     raster@valinux.com
                                    raster@enlightenment.org raster@linux.com
				    raster@zip.com.au