Re: WindowMaker theme for GNUstep?

[Uli Kusterer]

In article <mailman.6077.1099104011.2017.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
 Jeremy Tregunna <jtregunna@fuqn.ca> wrote:

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> On Oct 29, 2004, at 10:19 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote:
> >  So, I was wondering, with WM being the recommended window manager for
> > GNUstep anyway, would it be possible to maybe make GNUstep's menu
> > drawing code use the same code and settings as WM? WM's highlighting 
> > and
> > gradients just look gorgeous, and GNUstep in comparison looks a little
> > out of place.
> >
> >  I know that some people here are very fond of the NeXT look, but I
> > think by adding a few gradients and ensuring the shadows and highlights
> > aren't overly sharp (the way WM does it), GNUstep would look sleek and
> > elegant enough to compete with the flashier themes out there, while not
> > being as gaudy and CPU-intensive as some of the stuff that ships with
> > KDE and GNOME.
> 
> Personally myself, I honestly believe that GNUstep aught to have a 
> theme engine instead of making these changes on code level, creating a 
> theme engine and having people make GNUstep look like whatever they 
> want it too would be much more constructive than making minor changes 
> like this, that will only prove to provoke some on the list, and start 
> a bikeshed on this topic that lasts for weeks on end.

Jeremy,

 sorry, guess I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to have someone write new 
code for GNUstep that mimics the WindowMaker theme. "adding gradients" 
and all that was mainly from a user's point of view. I hadn't even come 
to thinking about an actual implementation yet.

 Thinking about it now, WindowMaker already has a "Themes" folder, and 
maybe it is already themeable? But I guess it doesn't really support 
themes in that sense. They look more like color schemes. With its 
configuration files being ASCII plists, it would have been easy to just 
hijack most of WMaker's settings and use them in the drawing code. Oh 
well...

 But you're right, a real theme engine is better in that case. And the 
problem of choosing a default theme could be solved by hijacking some 
code from WindowMaker's updated NeXT theme. It would use the same 
settings files as WM, and thus whatever you configure in WM would make 
GNUstep look the same, thus getting rid of the odd differences where 
e.g. WM's "Applications" menu has a gradient while GWorkspace's is 
colored "flat".

 WM can be set to look just like the old NeXT look, so the purists would 
be kept happy, while people like me would just set up some gradients and 
be happy.

Guess I'll have to go look for Cameleon now :-)

Cheers,
-- Uli
http://www.zathras.de