Re: Call for 2.2 Screenshots

[Darryl Rees <rees netnam vn>]

Calum Benson wrote:

> On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 15:30, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>
>
>  
>
> > In GNOME 2.2, a "theme" is now a collection of subthemes, such as 
> > icon subtheme, GTK+ subtheme, and metacity subtheme.
> >    
>
> Weren't we going to use "theme set" and "theme" rather than "theme" and
> "subtheme"?  No point in making up words when there are perfectly good
> ones already available :)
>
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
Calum,

In normal english usage a 'theme' implies a thread of continuity or 
similarity that ties together a number of items. I think the word theme 
for a desktop's appearance came originally from mswin, where they were 
indeed 'themes' in the normal english sense of the word - eg. music 
theme, medieval theme, racing car theme, etc... where icons, sounds, 
desktop colouring etc all worked together to make up a theme. But a wm 
framestyle or application skin by itself doesn't have much to do with 
the normal english usage of the word theme.

'Subtheme' and 'theme set' are both just completely wierd nonwords :-) A 
theme is a theme. Other stuff can be called whatever - icon sets, window 
frames, backgrounds, skins, chrome, looks, render, facades ( panoply? 
livery?, ok getting silly ). my 2c.

Darryl Rees, English Pedant