Re: [Nautilus-list] Re: GNOME theme in Mozilla (was GNOME user environment brainstorming)

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

on 5/24/01 1:35 AM, Ian McKellar at yakk yakk net au wrote:

> On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 07:05:53PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>> 
>>> Though moving to Crux would be nicer (in my biased opinion).
>> 
>> We need a default that works over the network and isn't so
>> graphics-intensive. That's the main issue.
> 
> No. I really think you're wrong on this issue. I think its very very
> important to have a theme that works well and efficiently over the network.
> But its also important to have a theme thats usable and looks attractive. I
> think we can have both - thats why Gtk+ is themeable!

I understand your sentiment, but I don't follow your logic. GTK+ isn't
themable so that you can have themes that are usable and look attractive --
you could accomplish those goals with a single built-in appearance. GTK+ is
themable so different people can choose to have different appearances if
they so desire. I think that's the only reason.

I don't see any fundamental conflict with usability + attractiveness vs.
network bandwidth. I think the new default GTK+ theme is both perfectly
usable and attractive in a streamlined sort of way. The conflict is with
graphics-intensive vs. network bandwidth. Crux is much more
graphics-intensive than the default theme, and thus fights more with network
bandwidth.

> For the first year or two I used X it was exclusively over the network - on
> dumbish X11R5 x-terminals. Over time I began using them less and using X
> on the console of PCs running Linux more. These days I hardly ever use remote
> X.
> 
> What I would suggest is that we make the default Gtk theme be as attractive
> and user-friendly as possible and have an option to use a theme that is more
> network-friendly. I'm fairly sure that at least 95% of GNOME users never run
> any remote apps. Anyone who does run remote apps will have to do a bunch of
> configuration to get GNOME to run remotely anyway. I recall there being
> outstanding issues with gdm's XDMCP support and GNOME packages are frequently
> not tested with remote X setups (Ximian 1.2 didn't work with remote X logins
> for a long time).
> 
> So thats my little rant - tell me if I'm wrong :)

I don't think you're wrong in any specific way, but I think your argument is
a little misleading. I don't think there's a case to be made that Crux is
more "user-friendly" than the default theme, unless you're using
"user-friendly" to mean "graphically rich", which would be sort of a warped
definition.

I have no idea what percentage of users use networks in such a way that the
graphics-intensive nature of Crux would be a noticeable issue. That's the
crux of the debate (sorry about that). Does anyone have evidence about this?

John

> 
> Ian
> 
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