[Tile-dev] Pending changes: "default" theme

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

The "default" theme currently serves two purposes:
it's the default theme under X11 (unless overridden
by user preferences in the X resource database),
and it's also used as the final fallback source
for elements and layouts that aren't defined in
other themes.

Although the design constraints for these two roles
have a lot of overlap -- elements should be plain
and unobtrusive and not clash too badly with anything else --
there are cases where they're in conflict.

For example, there's the fallback Radiobutton.indicator
and Checkbutton.indicator elements.  (BTW, these are
scheduled to be renamed to "radio" and "check", respectively).
These don't work properly without further script-level
configuration to set state-dependent resources.
That is, if you do:

    style theme create empty
    tile::setTheme empty

ttk::radiobuttons and ttk::checkbuttons will be non-functional;
the appearance doesn't change with the state.

So: the current plan is to introduce a new theme
(probably called "plain"), which will be used as the
default on X11.  Look and feel will match Tile's
current "default" theme (that is, similar to 2003-era
out-of-box Gnome and/or as_style.tcl from Tklib).

The "default" theme will only be used to provide default
element implementations and layout specifications; there
will be no [style configure] or [style map] settings,
and it won't be listed in [ttk::themes].

"default" should probably be renamed "root" or ".",
if that can be done without causing transition problems
(see earlier thread on compatibility policy).


--Joe English

  jen...@fl...