Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
All,
On my schedule for this (potential) process, today was the day to
decide whether or not we wanted to do this. Very few people have
answered... Please answer.
As it stands, with one suggested theme and no leader for it, we can't
go ahead. There is just no point. Is there any support for this idea,
or are people only here because they want to design the default theme
(serious question, not an attack! ...please answer)
In summary, here is why I think it is a good idea to do this
* If you want your design to be available to Ubuntu users, this is the
only certain way to do it
* In the past, this team has had most success developing community
themes (my opinion, but see below)
* If we want to be taken more seriously as a team in the future,
getting good stuff done well without offiicial hand-holding is
important
* Developing these themes is fun, seeing people using your theme is great
But if we don't get people able to run them/do design we can't go
forward. It is only sensible for me to drive a process like this a
certain amount (i.e the leaders need to want to do it!, and do does
the team)
It occurs to me that if we can't even make a complete theme of ANY
style to a good standard, we shouldn't expect to be taken seriously
when we ask to design the default theme!
Happy answering,
Who
On Jan 3, 2008 9:59 AM, Frank Schoep [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Jan 3, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
To all the new people around here - please pay attention to Who, he
has been around here for a good while and knows the drill. …
Absolutely – there are a few people on this list who've been around
for quite some time. I think this list is very fortunate to still
have experienced people like Who and Troy around, but it's also good
to see a lot of new enthusiastic people sharing their vision.
…
We came close to the real deal once, was it Dapper?, where we got a
few community themes, bundled, but not enabled, by default.
I think you are referring to Edgy, as the Theme Teams were introduced
in that release. Eventually three themes ended up in universe, being
Blubuntu (Who / PingunZ), Peace (Chuck Huber) and Tropic (Viper550).
While varying in quality and polish, the mere fact they were included
was a sign that independent small community groups could work towards
their own vision *and* meet the hard deadline constraints that were
set for them.
This happened solely because of two things:
* A few people stood up and took responsibility for creating themes
Indeed. There was a deadline for Theme Team applications a few weeks
into the release cycle so that the theme leaders needed to be
involved from the start up through a few weeks before release. For
Edgy, four leaders stepped up with a serious proposal.
During the development period, we regularly discussed progress and
problems and where possible I tried to help out either myself or by
getting the right people in touch with each other.
* Daniel Holbach saved our asses with a lot of packaging work we
really should have done our selves
Daniel has historically helped out with a lot of packaging work,
indeed. For the Edgy Theme Teams, we made sure he only had one final
version to package per theme with room before the deadline, so they
wouldn't burden him much.
I think it would be very valuable to have a History Page on the wiki
outlining the success and Failures of the art team. That would
probably help to make it clear how we are doomed to repeat history
unless people step up an take responsibility.
While I can't say much about Feisty, Gutsy or Hardy-in-progress, I
could tell you about Edgy. As far as I know, Edgy was the first (and
last?) release to actively try and use community input as a viable
source for distribution artwork.
Postmortem I did an interview with Linux.com on the Edgy cycle, and
there's some half-decent comments from Slashdot, too:
http://www.linux.com/feature/58477
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/2241255
('Stroep' [sic])
It seems that all the history we built on the Wiki has been shoveled
elsewhere or been dumped in a landfill altogether, but if you can
find it, you might be able to reconstruct a decent timeline along
with the mailing list.
It was pretty high traffic during those days (July - October 2006)
and the ML / Wiki combination seemed to work somewhat satisfactory.
All in all, Edgy was edgy to me – as you can read in the interview
the idea was to try something new, community artwork by default, and
since there were no trodden roads available I did my best to get and
keep things rolling in an enjoyable fashion.
I think it worked out pretty well in terms of community involvement,
enthusiasm, commitment, process structure and raw output. Slightly
missing was the desired art *direction* but somehow I don't think
that problem's been resolved ever since, no flame or offense intended.
If you'd ask me now, sure I'd do things
Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
Well said!
I think that many people don't take us (you?) seriously. The current
theme is years old...
Nobody uses the default theme (except of me, I think...).
If anybody woullead a team, I would join in. (I could do things like a
new GDM-theme...).
Let's fight;-)
Am Samstag, den 05.01.2008, 11:23 + schrieb Who:
All,
On my schedule for this (potential) process, today was the day to
decide whether or not we wanted to do this. Very few people have
answered... Please answer.
As it stands, with one suggested theme and no leader for it, we can't
go ahead. There is just no point. Is there any support for this idea,
or are people only here because they want to design the default theme
(serious question, not an attack! ...please answer)
In summary, here is why I think it is a good idea to do this
* If you want your design to be available to Ubuntu users, this is the
only certain way to do it
* In the past, this team has had most success developing community
themes (my opinion, but see below)
* If we want to be taken more seriously as a team in the future,
getting good stuff done well without offiicial hand-holding is
important
* Developing these themes is fun, seeing people using your theme is great
But if we don't get people able to run them/do design we can't go
forward. It is only sensible for me to drive a process like this a
certain amount (i.e the leaders need to want to do it!, and do does
the team)
It occurs to me that if we can't even make a complete theme of ANY
style to a good standard, we shouldn't expect to be taken seriously
when we ask to design the default theme!
Happy answering,
Who
On Jan 3, 2008 9:59 AM, Frank Schoep [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Jan 3, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
To all the new people around here - please pay attention to Who, he
has been around here for a good while and knows the drill. …
Absolutely – there are a few people on this list who've been around
for quite some time. I think this list is very fortunate to still
have experienced people like Who and Troy around, but it's also good
to see a lot of new enthusiastic people sharing their vision.
…
We came close to the real deal once, was it Dapper?, where we got a
few community themes, bundled, but not enabled, by default.
I think you are referring to Edgy, as the Theme Teams were introduced
in that release. Eventually three themes ended up in universe, being
Blubuntu (Who / PingunZ), Peace (Chuck Huber) and Tropic (Viper550).
While varying in quality and polish, the mere fact they were included
was a sign that independent small community groups could work towards
their own vision *and* meet the hard deadline constraints that were
set for them.
This happened solely because of two things:
* A few people stood up and took responsibility for creating themes
Indeed. There was a deadline for Theme Team applications a few weeks
into the release cycle so that the theme leaders needed to be
involved from the start up through a few weeks before release. For
Edgy, four leaders stepped up with a serious proposal.
During the development period, we regularly discussed progress and
problems and where possible I tried to help out either myself or by
getting the right people in touch with each other.
* Daniel Holbach saved our asses with a lot of packaging work we
really should have done our selves
Daniel has historically helped out with a lot of packaging work,
indeed. For the Edgy Theme Teams, we made sure he only had one final
version to package per theme with room before the deadline, so they
wouldn't burden him much.
I think it would be very valuable to have a History Page on the wiki
outlining the success and Failures of the art team. That would
probably help to make it clear how we are doomed to repeat history
unless people step up an take responsibility.
While I can't say much about Feisty, Gutsy or Hardy-in-progress, I
could tell you about Edgy. As far as I know, Edgy was the first (and
last?) release to actively try and use community input as a viable
source for distribution artwork.
Postmortem I did an interview with Linux.com on the Edgy cycle, and
there's some half-decent comments from Slashdot, too:
http://www.linux.com/feature/58477
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/14/2241255
('Stroep' [sic])
It seems that all the history we built on the Wiki has been shoveled
elsewhere or been dumped in a landfill altogether, but if you can
find it, you might be able to reconstruct a decent timeline along
with the mailing list.
It was pretty high traffic during those days (July - October 2006)
and the ML / Wiki combination seemed to work somewhat satisfactory.
All in all, Edgy was edgy to me – as you can read in the interview
the idea was to try something new, community artwork by default, and
since
Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
I personally take this Civitas Forum in a semi-serious mode. Why ? I put here on this community some questions - in time - and I add some points in discussion. Responses, generally - just disappoint me. Where I talk about serious problems such a programmatic way to rethink UI elements design - giving some examples, other peoples respond me they don't like the color of my example [ where the color was not the problem on topic ] - so I see some discussions are done in parallel - some peoples talk about something - other peoples understand everything else - so being parallels they will not meet in the next gazillion of years. [this is not about Ken - I observe Ken has a good background, knowledges and leader qualities - this is good ]. So regarding your question Sebastian - I am designer - I respect my job rules - for some applications I have to design custom graphics for form elements, and UI. I do Plex WT theme for XP few years ago. I can design elements for a new Ubuntu theme. But also I see here some talented guys that can do the same. Not a single problem here with designers. But with decision power. How I can help when I say the things should be on this way(), from Usability point of view and other one after me will say no, you're not right ...so where my expertise can go ?. Is not important that I have some experience with this kind of things. Anyone will say NO and the problem is solved. ...waste of time, believe-me Sebastian - until the decisional mechanism is solved. Right now anyone is equal to anyone. This is the perfect terrain for the entropy rules (sad joke). For example shadowh511 said : I think of a clean, simple OS. the color brown represents cleanliness and simplicity, while blue represents sadness and fear. If we want to have people download hardy, why not give them a nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble windows and all of that eye candy How could I can take this seriously ? Regarding colors - the problem is solved before we born - so when he think, some peoples could affirm precisely where the problem is. Also a lack of maturity - why not give them a nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble windows and all of that eye candy From his point of view all problems are solved with some wobble and some eye candy. That's all. No problem with the enterprise user - which has other rituals / values - no problem that Ubuntu must penetrate there, eyecandy and wobble will solve all... even healthy problems maybe. Well - this is a complex product with long term effects. But some peoples want just to see how their dreams come true - not important if this is in benefit of all (or almost all users) or not. Also we not need a theme - there are a lot - we want to do default Ubuntu theme (with minimum 3 color variations). That's the point. Hardy will be LTS. Hardy will go on enterprises and offices. That mean thousands of peoples with vary ages. Hardy is not just for few peoples with free time. This theme must cover a social demand - to be easy received by all that peoples / to be easy to work with / to be visually pleasant. To be clean, useful and distinctive for Ubuntu. This is not so easy to obtain - anyhow some proposals will not go too far with diagonal stripes on the scrollbar OR semitransparent buttons (on scrollbar on others sides) - at least corporate users will hate that because affect the look focus - also those stripes does not represent anything if favor of clean principle, being from start a complication. Here must be a distinction about how we like and what is good. But this mean maturity and professionalism - not just I like this - I think that ..and so. Professionalism mean clear states in every domain Yes and No not I think this could be.. or .. Maybe..., or with states as Me, then Goethe So when I'll see a clean Idea in which I can believe OR when I'll see a structure where I can collaborate [anyhow you need to create a decisional structure - democracy, democracy but until when ?] - be sure I will participate with work and knowledge - on the mean time I am member of other Ubuntu teams and I have to fill daily bug reports and a lot of other stuff ... I will put some considerations about the Ubuntu 8.04 default theme in a later (maybe tomorrow) mail. We will see after that. Good luck - best wishes for everyone - and ..be minstrels not kings guys ;) SorinN Sebastian Billaudelle wrote: Well said! I think that many people don't take us (you?) seriously. The current theme is years old... Nobody uses the default theme (except of me, I think...). If anybody woullead a team, I would join in. (I could do things like a new GDM-theme...). Let's fight;-) Am Samstag, den 05.01.2008, 11:23 + schrieb Who: All, On my schedule for this (potential) process, today was the day to decide whether or not we wanted to do this. Very
Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
Thats my opinion. Thank you! Am Samstag, den 05.01.2008, 16:54 +0200 schrieb Nemes Ioan Sorin: I personally take this Civitas Forum in a semi-serious mode. Why ? I put here on this community some questions - in time - and I add some points in discussion. Responses, generally - just disappoint me. Where I talk about serious problems such a programmatic way to rethink UI elements design - giving some examples, other peoples respond me they don't like the color of my example [ where the color was not the problem on topic ] - so I see some discussions are done in parallel - some peoples talk about something - other peoples understand everything else - so being parallels they will not meet in the next gazillion of years. [this is not about Ken - I observe Ken has a good background, knowledges and leader qualities - this is good ]. So regarding your question Sebastian - I am designer - I respect my job rules - for some applications I have to design custom graphics for form elements, and UI. I do Plex WT theme for XP few years ago. I can design elements for a new Ubuntu theme. But also I see here some talented guys that can do the same. Not a single problem here with designers. But with decision power. How I can help when I say the things should be on this way(), from Usability point of view and other one after me will say no, you're not right ...so where my expertise can go ?. Is not important that I have some experience with this kind of things. Anyone will say NO and the problem is solved. ...waste of time, believe-me Sebastian - until the decisional mechanism is solved. Right now anyone is equal to anyone. This is the perfect terrain for the entropy rules (sad joke). For example shadowh511 said : I think of a clean, simple OS. the color brown represents cleanliness and simplicity, while blue represents sadness and fear. If we want to have people download hardy, why not give them a nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble windows and all of that eye candy How could I can take this seriously ? Regarding colors - the problem is solved before we born - so when he think, some peoples could affirm precisely where the problem is. Also a lack of maturity - why not give them a nice theme such as union and give them the desktop cube and the wobble windows and all of that eye candy From his point of view all problems are solved with some wobble and some eye candy. That's all. No problem with the enterprise user - which has other rituals / values - no problem that Ubuntu must penetrate there, eyecandy and wobble will solve all... even healthy problems maybe. Well - this is a complex product with long term effects. But some peoples want just to see how their dreams come true - not important if this is in benefit of all (or almost all users) or not. Also we not need a theme - there are a lot - we want to do default Ubuntu theme (with minimum 3 color variations). That's the point. Hardy will be LTS. Hardy will go on enterprises and offices. That mean thousands of peoples with vary ages. Hardy is not just for few peoples with free time. This theme must cover a social demand - to be easy received by all that peoples / to be easy to work with / to be visually pleasant. To be clean, useful and distinctive for Ubuntu. This is not so easy to obtain - anyhow some proposals will not go too far with diagonal stripes on the scrollbar OR semitransparent buttons (on scrollbar on others sides) - at least corporate users will hate that because affect the look focus - also those stripes does not represent anything if favor of clean principle, being from start a complication. Here must be a distinction about how we like and what is good. But this mean maturity and professionalism - not just I like this - I think that ..and so. Professionalism mean clear states in every domain Yes and No not I think this could be.. or .. Maybe..., or with states as Me, then Goethe So when I'll see a clean Idea in which I can believe OR when I'll see a structure where I can collaborate [anyhow you need to create a decisional structure - democracy, democracy but until when ?] - be sure I will participate with work and knowledge - on the mean time I am member of other Ubuntu teams and I have to fill daily bug reports and a lot of other stuff ... I will put some considerations about the Ubuntu 8.04 default theme in a later (maybe tomorrow) mail. We will see after that. Good luck - best wishes for everyone - and ..be minstrels not kings guys ;) SorinN Sebastian Billaudelle wrote: Well said! I think that many people don't take us (you?) seriously. The current theme is years old... Nobody uses the default theme (except of me, I think...). If anybody woullead a team, I would join in. (I could do things like a new GDM-theme...).
Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
Who wrote: 3. We shouldn't get hung up on being the default theme. We gain freedom of design by NOT being default, and we can still reach many people (Epiphany team doesn't stop because Firefox is deafult... Why should we ONLY concentrate on the default theme) With a little regular cleanup and such, this would probably be a great starting point for a 'Blueprint' at Launchpad. For those that are unaware of Launchpad and its potential for keeping people 'in the loop' on discussions like this: 1) Create a wiki page as an outline of your idea. 2) Create a Blueprint at Launchpad. Create a Team. 3) Attach the wiki page to the Blueprint and sign the team up. Now you can keep the ongoing and pertinent discussions on the wiki in a tidy area. Not only that, but every change that is _not_ marked as Trivial will be automatically sent an email update. Who, maybe you can gauge response to the idea by the size of the team and keep things organized? Sincerely, TJS signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
Well, Troy this can be a start. To create a responsible team to keep a rhythm, to have some public places, a team which can start writing specifications and guidelines for what can be a great thing. - about the default theme - this community move around the Earth because a new brand look is really needed. And is better to come from inside, like $MS or Sun. This is the big point I supposed. Finally, why not default theme- I see some peoples here with talent and determination, the only missing thing is a well tempered workgroup (like Inkscape and Gimp already has). Also Mark will be glad to see this job by the Ubuntu community. And maybe, on the road, we can try to implement some new features, maybe a new theming engine. About your proposals all 3 points are pertinent. SorinN Troy James Sobotka wrote: Who wrote: 3. We shouldn't get hung up on being the default theme. We gain freedom of design by NOT being default, and we can still reach many people (Epiphany team doesn't stop because Firefox is deafult... Why should we ONLY concentrate on the default theme) With a little regular cleanup and such, this would probably be a great starting point for a 'Blueprint' at Launchpad. For those that are unaware of Launchpad and its potential for keeping people 'in the loop' on discussions like this: 1) Create a wiki page as an outline of your idea. 2) Create a Blueprint at Launchpad. Create a Team. 3) Attach the wiki page to the Blueprint and sign the team up. Now you can keep the ongoing and pertinent discussions on the wiki in a tidy area. Not only that, but every change that is _not_ marked as Trivial will be automatically sent an email update. Who, maybe you can gauge response to the idea by the size of the team and keep things organized? Sincerely, TJS -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
[ubuntu-art] [Ubuntu-Art]Theme Teams. Moving Forward. Making Stuff!
This is quite lengthy. If you can't read it all but are interested then try just to look at the bits with ==?== in front of them - they're questions that I hope as many people in the art-team as possible should answer... Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Hardy/Alternate/ThemeTeams If anyone thinks sabdfl needs to know about this then please forward it to him Hi all, Given the recent discussion about frustration in moving things forward and the team not really having direction, I think it might help if we organised ourselves a bit more... I think we have the talent and enthusiasm in the team to get great stuff out if we do it right! So, I have a suggestion: A few years back we organised a system where we had 3 'Theme Teams' that took charge of developing themes to be packaged separately and be available in Universe. This wasn't without it's troubles, but did produce some nice work. I think we should do it again. It seems very unhelpful to suggest something like organisation and then leave it alone, so I've expanded below... Proposal Here are the 'rules' I propose. Please comment on them. * These theme teams would _not_ be developing default themes - and should not be under the illusion they are * The teams should _aim_ to create complimentary themes, not too similar * A theme team will develop or COMPILE at LEAST gtk theme, metacity, gdmsplash, background. Usplash and icons would be ideal (for icons, compiling seems much the better option) * We're talking about making FUNCTIONING themes, not mockups! * The process needs to MEET DEADLINES. If we want to be available in Universe _for the release_ (which we might already have missed the chance to do - what do people think?) then meeting deadlines at every stage of the way is essential. * Each theme team needs a leader to collate and co-ordinate things. * The themes will rock! ==?== What do you think of these ^ ? ==?== Should we aim to do these for Hardy or Hardy + 1? I think we should aim to have 2 or 3 theme teams - so as not to spread experience and time too thinly. For this we need people with time, enthusiasm and knowledge about themeing to come forward and agree to be leaders of these Theme Teams. These people don't necessarily have to be designers, but they do need to be prepared to make sure the team is meeting the deadlines and producing work. If you think you've got what it takes, step up! ~~ Getting Started ~~~ This brings me on to how I think we can start. We still don't have a better tool than the wiki, which is a shame, but not a big problem! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Hardy/Alternate/ThemeTeam For the first stage, I've created a page where anyone who wants to lead a theme team can enter a description of what they want to do. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Hardy/Alternate/ThemeTeams/ThemeProposals People who want to join the team can 'sign up' and we can go from there. It makes sense to me to either vote on these ideas, or Leadership/Decision Making We need leaders for theme teams, and they need to be prepared to make things happen :) These leaders will have the final call on their theme's design. They could either design a theme, or compile a theme form existing components, or a bit of both ==?== Do we decide leaders and teams based on a vote, by which teams most people want to contribute to, or by some other means (decision by sabdfl, Kwwii?) ==?==Want to be a LEADER? So, if you've got a theme you'd like to develop - have a think about being a theme team leader. I did the job for the Blubuntu Theme some releases back, it was a lot of fun and VERY rewarding! To get an idea of what is required of you, it might help to look at the Blubuntu wiki pages I made. I found it to be an excellent way to organise the work... https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Blubuntu - they give the best idea of what is involved. This time around there will be more commitment in packaging than last time! Any other people who have done it before, please chime in... Timescales I've put a draft timeline for THIS process on the Wiki page I made https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Hardy/Alternate/ThemeTeam First deadline is JAN 5th - DO WE WANT TO DO THIS == ? == Well, do we? Launchpad ~~~ ==?== How do we integrate correctly with Launchpad? It would seem that the existing *-look themes have separate packages for each thing - so I gues we should do this. We need to work with Launchpad to comply with the process for getting new packages accepted in to Universe (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages ) Please, can someone advise on this - shall we speak to Dan Holbach? ~~~ The End! Wow, finally. Please comment, please step up! Who (Jonathan Austin) -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
