Re: [Sawfish] Updated list of themes

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

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 04:48, Christopher Roy Bratusek
<nano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Am 14.06.2011 11:01, schrieb Eric P. Mangold:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Well, there are many popular black WM-themes outwhere, not just for SF, but
> also for MetaCity, Compiz & Co. Of course none of them is the default, but
> they have huge download-numbers.
>
> Not to offend you, but I don't care about Windows and OS X. AFAIK Xubuntu
> and Mint ship dark themes. (OK, none of those two is really relevant).

I don't care about these OS's either - the point was simply that these
folks have graphic designers and UI folks working for them, and it's
not conceivable to me that they would give approval to a black-centric
theme.

>>> 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.
>>
>
> Hmm... I wouldn't say black is an eyesore, green or yellow would be way
> more.

Perhaps I chose my words too strongly. The black theme has grow on me
just a little bit in a last few hours using it. However, having not
seen it before, and wanting to check out this cool new default theme,
I can't forget the feeling of being utterly repulsed when I first
switched it on. I wouldn't want a new user to have that feeling - and
ignore all of the wonderful merits of sawfish.

>>> 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.
>>
>
> Hmm... we could make StyleTab::Silver the default.
> Or add another sub-style?

I think the Silver is quite nice, and I wouldn't be upset about it
being the default.

OTOH, it's really hard to go wrong with a Bluish theme, but someone
would have to work one up.

>>> 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.

Would it be possible for a theme to ship custom, user-friendly tooltip
text, and have it be enabled by default? Of course, this would
introduce the problem of having to translate all those texts. Which
may make it a lot more work than it's worth...

>>> 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?
>
> Not for GNOME, but for GTK+, Crux does that, but the result would be awfull
> for StyleTab.
> Still that's sub-optimal, as it won't match someone's color-scheme who's
> using KDE.

Ah, I had read reports with mixed results about running sawfish under
KDE - I didn't know it was a really viable option.

I may actually want to start doing that... :)

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

+1 on StyleTab::Silver, unless someone has a better idea, or wants to
whip up a StyleTab::Blue.

-E

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