Re: cleaning up themes

[Mike Hearn <mike plan99 net>]

>> That's incredibly lame, it'd be better not to give one-click installs at
>> all if it'll randomly fail on the hottest new themes.
> 
> It won't randomly fail, it would warn the user I hope.

I meant it'd randomly fail from the users perspective, because there's no
way to tell ahead of time if a new engine is used or not.
 
> Because there is no standardized packaging format and distribution
> method

Theme engines are usually just DSOs right? Or at least, if they
include extra data that can be compiled in to make it a single DSO. That's
one file, which can be installed to a known place that can be determined
easily at runtime (at least on Linux). So it would definitely be possible.

> and beyond that, the distributions that do use the same package
> formats, often have different policies for where things actually go on
> the filesystem?

Themes are always installed to the same place relative to GTK+ itself
though.

> And no, autopackage is not a solution for it. Most people do not have it.

It installs itself the first time you use it (by running the package).

> Adding yet more places for a user to have to look
> to see what versions of software they have, what upgrades are available
> (which will cause a LOT of problems, as software will be in one
> database, but not the system packaging db), and other such utilities,
> will just add confusion to the process.

There's no fundamental reason why autopackages (or .themes or whatever)
can't update themselves automatically and use the system database instead
of a separate one, it just hasn't been done yet.

And how important is it that themes are upgraded automatically anyway?
They aren't security-critical. Is it really more important than easy
one-click installs of new eyecandy (which is a nice end user feature)?

thanks -mike