Re: Themes on GnuStep?

[Robert E. Hartley]

I got sidetracked with something similar when I took a look at the KDE theme
methods.  It is rather similar, kind of like the old Win 3.0 INI files.

The thing about using the GTK+ theme stuff is that they are themes for the
widgets, as opposed to the window manager...  then again, I guess the window
manager could be considered to be just another application, it just has its own
window manager specific widgets.

(I'm glad you brought this up, because I have not considered the window manager
decorations as special use widgets before.)

The Gtk theme file is a structured document.  I was thinking of rewriting a
simple converter that would read in their theme file, and then spit out XML
files. Once that is done, we will not need to expend as much effort parsing and
porting the files.  I had done this at one point for the Motif theme stuff, but
the Gtk internal code was so convoluted, and so much of the essential functions
and variables were marked as "static", that I would have had to release a
mauled version of Gtk just to be able to publish my converter.  It would have
been an administrative nightmare.

Luckily for me, the Gtk code changed, broke my converter app, and I could
abandon the thing after I had converted some of the Gtk themes to Motif.

What would be nice is if we had a superset of the widget theme files that was
based on XML that we could read in and then do a "SaveAs" to whatever widget
format we would want.  Maybe a variation on UIML, so that we could indicate the
various widgets' parts in a "pan tool set" way.  It might serve to pave the way
for developers to make a decent theme builder, which is something painfully
lacking so far, despite themes having been around for a while now.

At the same time, we could add the window manager decorations as specialized
widgets so that they can be used in either a theme or gui builder.

The major problem with this is that the various widget sets have mostly
intersecting functionality, but around the edges they do things differently.
It would require knowledge of GnuStep / Gtk / Qt / Motif if we want all of them
to work properly.  For starters we could go with using just the Gtk themes,
since that is likely where most new users will be coming from when going to
GnuStep.

If we do it right, we might be able to get Apple to pick up on it and use it
for their own desktop environment.

Who knows, wilder things have happened,

Rob

"Mondragon, Ian" wrote:

> gack.  i've been hashing out how to make Interface utilize the WindowMaker
> theme files effectively, which might be *slightly* more desirable...seeing
> as how they're just plists and can be easily read in using the NSDictionary
> class.  i haven't gotten *too* far into the actual task of displaying the
> images yet (i'm a little tied up with other things in the project), but i
> will be getting around to it.  anyways...just my 2 cents.
>
> > The way I foresee it, we should be able to make use of whatever theme is
> > in
> > use by Gtk, Qt (or Motif).  If we are compatible with say Gtk theme files,
> > then there will never be a shortage of theme files and pixmaps to choose
> > from.
>
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