Re: [Interfacewm-discuss] Re: Interfacewm-discuss digest, Vol 1 #69 - 1 msg

[Chris B. V. <ch...@we...>]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 21:28:55 -0700
thisguyisi <thi...@ea...> wrote:
[...]
> So you are suggesting IWM be "trained" to grab theme info on startup, 
> and set the global color values, so any subsequently launced GUI
> element (Window/Panel/Menu) can draw itself with the selected theme's
> colors?

Yes and no.

Any window manager's themes are not about the _interior_ of a window,
only about the frame (title, resize, buttons).

Take WMaker (which probably most are using right now) as an example and
change the style or theme and you will end up, say an OpenStep'ish look,
instead of the NeXT'ish.

That means that your windows will have a blue'ish titlebar -- while the
menus of a GNUstep-based application are still black (NeXT'ish) because
GNUstep menus draw their own titlebar...

Using colours and setting certain defaults in NSGlobalDomain, we can
make sure that there will be a consistent look for both, a "regular"
window _and_ menus.

> However, currently themes utilize static images instead of adjustable 
> "colorfills", which leads to a patchy appearance in the end?

See above. GNUstep menus draw their own titlebar. Using themes won't
affect the look of a GNUstep menu (right now), no matter whether you use
colours or images for the titlebar.

> Perhaps Chameleon can be extended to handle all "themographic" issues 
> with the GUI, and IWM (and any other GNUstep app) could use
> Chameleon's "themographic services". Then IWM could be distributed
> with Chameleon as a helper app?

Chameleon can easily 'extended'. However, IWM is NOT an application, it
does NOT use AppKit -- it's a tool, only using GNUstep -make/base. The
frame of a window is a regular X11 window.

But yes, we could write (and probably will) write a IWMConfig.app (or
use Chameleon... Ian?) -- similar to Widow Maker's WPrefs.app

> Please don't hurt me, I'm a doctor, not a programmer Jim!  J/K. :-) 

"You're dead, Jim"

> Seriously though, I don't read/write/program C or Obj-C as yet and am 
> considering learning. So you could lump me in the "potential user" 
> category. Hopefully my comments will prove interesting or amusing, 
> rather than annoying.

I think that's what we need -- comments and thoughts of potential users.
Otherwise we'll fail to reach the goal -- usability from a user's point
of view.

-- 
Chris