Re: [XBoard-devel] XBoard themes

[Yann Dirson]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2015 at 07:44:47PM +0100, H.G. Muller wrote:
>  So the package with the default Chu-Shogi theme
> should contain a general theme file 'chu' as well as a specific theme file
> 'default-chu'. Or perhaps any theme should also contain that config file
> 'chu'. (But this will cause trouble with uninstall, unless we exempt that
> file from uninstall, which also seems bad.)

For variants that have to be known to XBoard anway, like Chu, it may
make more sense to distribute the general conf as part of XBoard.

> 
> Of course it would also be nice if newly used themes would automagically
> become available in the 'Themes' listbox of the View->Board dialog, so that
> they can be selected there. For this a similar system could be used that
> already exists for adding engines: the make-install script of a theme could
> call XBoard with the -addMasterOption "xxx" option to add a time-samped line
> xxx to the XBoard master settings file. This line would then be a
> yet-to-be-implemented option -addTheme THEMEDEF, which would add THEMEDEF to
> the user's -themeNames list in his persistent settings file when he runs
> XBoard for the first time after the theme install (with that particular
> persistence file). This way newly installed themes would automatically
> triccle into all his persistence files.

And what about "make uninstall" ?  It would be nice if it would remove
the theme's conf, and even more if it was able to make the theme
switch back to default on the next run when it was the one listed in
the persistence file.

In short, it would be good to register a single "-useTheme" option in
the persistence file, instead of expanding the conf file's contents.


> The equivalent of a general theme like @chu to a desktop user should be a
> new .desktop file that starts XBoard with the @chu settings.

For theme confs, it would be "Set Chu theme to $whatever and play Chu".