Re: gtk-engines update

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Anders Carlsson <andersca gnu org> writes:

> On Mon, 2002-01-21 at 20:55, Chris Phelps wrote:
> > Anyone have objections to starting a gtk-engines-plus package with (the
> > current) mac-engine, thin-ice, crux, etc?
> > 
> > I'm going to do some renaming action on my engine right now and then
> > have owen remove the mac-engine module from CVS. If no one objects, I'll
> > import gtk-engines-plus soon after.

Hmmm, please note that you should _never_ reimport code that is
already in CVS; instead find someone with access to the server
or mail cvsmaster gnome org and get the original files copied
to the new location; then you can 'cvs remove' them from the
old location.

> > Later,
> > Chris
> 
> If owen doesn't disapprove of it, I'd rather have everything in
> gtk-engines. That makes more sense IMO.

I'm not a huge fan of a -plus setup. A -plus package is by definition
"things which aren't good enough to go in the main package". So, by
definition -plus package has no criterion for inclusion, and will
inevitably be a collection of unmaintained stuff that crashes
and doesn't compile.

On the other hand, while I'm willing to expand gtk-engines, I want
to keep it pretty limited.  I'd say the criterion would be:

 * Clean, maintainable code.

 * Maintained code. Unless the theme is tiny, there must be someone
   willing to take care of fixing and improving it.

 * No hacks. Must work within the GTK+ theme system. Or, if it has
   hacks, they must be _reliable_ hacks. That is, they must not
   interfere with other themes, and the theme must clean up after
   itself properly when loaded.

 * No copyright or trademark infringement. Must have original artwork,
   and an original name.

 * Must be useful. That is, it must be significantly different than
   other included theme engines; a theme engine that was "a better
   version of the Metal theme" would not be accepted, unless it
   replaced the metal theme.

 * Must be attractive. Obviously a matter of taste, but the mininum
   here would be "carefully drawn" and "you could imagine using
   it for an extended period of time."

 * Unless it's a clone of an existing look on a different platform,
   it must use the same "language" as the default GTK+ look.

The basic goal would be that a distribution could ship the gtk-engines
package with nothing added or removed and get a good set of themes
for their users.

This, means, among things, that the total number of themes shouldn't
be that large. If the number of themes (and a single engine, if well
written, might have mutiple themes) is more than 10 or so, I think
that would be too many.

For packages that don't get into gtk-engines package, I think separate
maintainance is the best idea... let the engine live or die on it's
own merits. If we need a "shareware" CD package, then we should do it
as CVS virtual module ... the only real disadvantage of that is that
configuration takes longer since every module needs to run it's own
configure.

Regards,
                                        Owen