On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 04:48, Christopher Roy Bratusek <[email protected]> wrote: > Am 14.06.2011 11:01, schrieb Eric P. Mangold: >> >> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 01:25, Christopher Roy Bratusek >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Am 14.06.2011 07:59, schrieb Eric P. Mangold: >>>> >>>> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 00:22, Christopher Roy Bratusek >>>> <[email protected]> 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 >>>>>> <[email protected]> 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 --- -- Sawfish ML
