RE: GEP-2 (metathemer)

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

BTW, I haven't been ignoring this, but I thought about it a bit last
week and really came up with pretty much the same requirements as are
already in the document.  I think the fireworks are more likely to start
when we have to translate them into a UI design, already we've had at
least four different user models proposed on the list, suggesting
various combinations of:

- Which capplets remain on the menu 
- Which capplets can you access via the metathemer window 
- Which capplets fall into both categories 

I have my own views on this, but the GEP presumably isn't the place to
discuss such matters :)  (FWIW, though, I did try fleshing out a
prototype design and it actually ended up looking not too different from
the one Lars proposed a while back).

I think my main concern is about the 'extensibility' aspect... allowing
a theme to specify arbitrary(ish) Gconf pairs is a neat idea and easy
enough to design a UI for, but unfortunately in the real world most apps
aren't themeable via GConf... right now for a Mozilla theme change to
take effect, for example, you have to execute a bit of javascript and
restart the whole application!  Maybe people will be prepared to patch
GNOME versions of such apps to work with GConf until they support native
toolkit theming better (if they ever do), but I'm not holding my
breath...

My other concern is whether accessibility themes should have to flag
themselves as such to be allowed to change fonts+backgrounds by
default... personally I don't think they should, special-casing things
for accessibility just doesn't feel right to me, but I know Seth has
other ideas :)  But again that's probably more of an implementation
detail than a GEP concern.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems