Re: Next GNUstep release?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi
> I haven't kept up with the state of development/readiness of the windows theme, 
> but I really don't agree with forcibly changing the default theme ... I know it 
> makes me really irate on the odd occasion when Apple change default behaviors 
> on OSX, and I have to look for the  way to revert to previous behaviors.
>
> The theme is the user's choice ... so what should happen is that, on 
> installation, the installer should ASK the user which theme they want to use, 
> allowing them to select between available themes, but making the windows one 
> the first selection (assuming here that for most apps it works well ... people 
> can always change theme on a per-app basis anyway).
>
> If the user has already chosen a theme themselves (ie the default is already 
> set in NSGlobalDomain) then the theme that they had previously chosen should be 
> the first/default option when they are asked to choose a default theme  ... so 
> they can just hit the return key to continue using the last theme they selected.
>    
Although I generally agree with leaving the default theme as is on Unix, 
where we can theoretically strive for a complete environment, on Windows 
we always will be hosted, thus I consider it correct to have a more 
windows. friendly theme as the default on windows. I consider it an 
exception. Even when using a complete development environment you 
probably want that. Also, if you go as far as having several developer 
applications installed, you will be smart enough to be able to revert to 
the default theme if you wish.

A default theme however must guarantee that any application can be 
compiled and work well without any further "porting efforts" to adapt 
it. This is not the case with the current WinUXTheme, although it works 
very well for some applications.

I think a good proposal would be, if possible, to make the WinUXTheme as 
a user-selectable component in the NSIS installer, however selecting it 
should write automatically the global preferences so that it will be 
enabled.

In this release I would make it by default unselected and maybe the next 
release will have it selected by default.

I don't know however if the windows installer can be so smart to write 
the NSGlobalDomain when installing it?

Riccardo