Re: Themes [was: Unidentified subject!]

[Owen Taylor <owt1 cornell edu>]

raster@redhat.com writes:

> To make the themes discussion at least constructive, I have put up a
> web page detailing what at least I would call stage 1 of themes -
> probably the easiest to implement, with the most effect. This is
> intended to foster construcive discussion, not promote flame wars on
> themes. This is a start. please take alook at:
> 
> http://www.labs.redhat.com/themes.shtml

(Why does Netscape insist on using a 8 point font when font
face is specified...)

- I'm curious as to how the ScaleMethod works. It seems that
  in many cases you don't just want to blow up the background.
  (Maybe OK for most buttons, but would be pretty awful for
  a Text widget, unless the central area was just a solid color) 
  So, how are the edge regions handled for tiling? Is (say) the top
  edge tiled horizontally?

- Is the whole pixmap (borders and all) set as the background?
  This would mean putting a lot of different big pixmaps onto the
  server for each different size of widget. 

  Also, that could have the typical background pixmap disadvantage that
  if the window is resized bigger, the user will briefly see then
  widgets tiled into the newly larger windows. (Because X tiles
  when the background pixmap is larger than the window, for
  people who aren't familiar with the effect) I suppose the
  answer to that would be to set the new pixmaps _before_ resizing
  the window in the size_allocate function for each widget.

- What's "Shaping Method" in the last example?

(Note that GTK just specifies the fg and background colors for
 a style and constructs the shadow colors from that.)

The big question in my mind is how all of these attributes would be
specified for widgets. Note that for some widget types, several
pixmaps will have to be specified. So simply adding the attributes to
styles won't work. (unless we specify allow specifying styles for 
parts of widgets.

Another question is whether alternate "standard" styles (Motif, W95,
etc.) can be specified efficiently enough with the themes mechanism
to jusitify dumping the currently non-functional style class mechanism
entirely? (Can people who want efficiency just live with the 
standard GTK look?)

None of this is meant to be flammage. Just questions that came
into my mind while looking the stuff over.

Regards,
                                        Owen