Re: [Sawfish] Updated list of themes

["Eric P. Mangold" <teratorn@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 01:25, Christopher Roy Bratusek
<nano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Am 14.06.2011 07:59, schrieb Eric P. Mangold:
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 00:22, Christopher Roy Bratusek
>> <nano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 14.06.2011 06:06, schrieb Eric P. Mangold:
>>>>
>>>> Sounds mostly good...
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 14:44, Christopher Roy Bratusek
>>>> <nano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>    wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> [...]
>>>>> At the end... the list of themes shipped with Sawfish:
>>>>>
>>>>> absolute-e
>>>>> candido
>>>>> Crux
>>>>> Elberg-tabbed
>>>>> microGUI
>>>>> mxflat
>>>>> StyleTab [default]
>>>>> Zami-like
>>>>> (gradient-tabbed)
>>>>
>>>> When did Crux lose the default position? To my mind, a sawfish without
>>>> a Crux default ain't no sawfish at all...
>>>
>>> StyleTab became default in 1.8.0RC. No one complained (neither at the
>>> proposal in Oct 10).
>>
>> Guess I missed that.
>>
>> I just tried StyleTab, and I'll just be honest - it's hideous. I can't
>> imagine black going well with any default desktop themes out there. I
>> don't see anywhere to configure the colors, but guess that is normal.
>>
>> Plus there are just a mess of buttons taking the the majority of the
>> horizontal titlebar space of a full-screen window on my netbook.
>>
>> And I have no clue what most of these buttons do, and since there are
>> not tooltips (a sawfish limitation? or?), I may never know what some
>> of them are supposed to do.
>>
>> I guess having a tab-capable theme is a good default.
>>
>> Not sure how useful this rant is... or what, if any, actionable items
>> I would suggest...
>>
>> Leaving tab support aside, who prefers the aesthetic appeal of
>> StyleTab over Crux?
>>
>> Suggestions?
>
> Black goes well with any bright default-theme and most distributions use a
> bright theme. Ubuntu is basically the only of the major distributions which
> doesn't use one.

I think black is a bad default color. You will never see Windows use
black. You will never see Mac OS X use black. And for that matter you
will never see a mainstream Linux distro ship a default desktop with
all-black window decorations. There is just no way.

> Also Crux with it's Blue/DarkGrey won't match all default
> themes, too.

Yes, a colorful theme with some blue and gray may not match the user's
Gnome/desktop theme, but at least it isn't going to be an eye sore
straight off the bat.

> Though `goes well' depends on whether you like contrasts or
> not. Crux + Bright theme = low contrast / StyleTab::Dark + Bright theme =
> high contrast.

Fine that it's configurable - I'm just worried about the default
experience of new sawfish users.

> StyleTab is pretty configurable. You can change all the buttons to your
> need, you can even change the position of the titlebar. Additionally
> StyleTab bundles several themes, you can switch from StyleTabs settings.
>
> Tooltips is a Sawfish setting (Appearance > Tooltips), regardless of theme.

Yep, just found that. Never needed to use that setting before.

However, the tooltips seem to basically be an introspective Lisp dump,
and hardly suitable for a novice/new user to make sense of.

> One thing you're right is the enormous amount of buttons to begin with. But:
> that's on my list of TODO for theming-1.9 branch.

Cool.

> Personally I and the author atleast do prefer StyleTab aesthetic appeal over
> Crux. Though taste isn't a good thing to discuss about, isn't it?

We don't have to discuss taste - but the default theme IS important.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but it shouldn't be awful - and a
pure-black theme, in this context, is awful imho. I don't think you
could find a graphic designer that disagrees with me.

> StyleTab became default as it showcases both Tabs and Title-Position (in the
> latter regard the only theme outwhere), it's flexible and offers dark and
> bright styles.

StyleTab does seem to be quite nice, in terms of configurability and
technical merit - and I don't want to take anything away from the hard
work that has gone in to it, but that said, I really don't think, in
its current form, that it is suitable for a new user.

This does raise an interesting question, however - if the user is
running under Gnome, is it possible to get style/color hints from the
environment somehow?

If not, can we at least talk about changing the default color to
something more neutral?

-E

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