Davyd Madeley made an interesting suggestion for redesigning the theme format. Assuming, as seems likely, we end up using Clutter, there’s no need to specify the structure of a window, which would need SVG. After all, all windows have a basically similar structure. Instead, we could style any item on the window usinga CSS file, [...]
GNOME bug 105188 suggests that prelighting– lighting up buttons when you hover the mouse over them to confirm that it’s okay to press them– should fade in from the non-prelit state. This was originally said to require a change to the theme format, but in fact I can’t see that it does: any theme [...]
GNOME bug 121866 would like a way to set drawing colours according to palette entries in bitmap images in the same theme, as well as giving literal RGB values or giving a reference to a GTK colour. It is suggested by the reporter that this could be done with the XPM format, which allows [...]
GNOME bug 120705 points out that Metacity doesn’t allow users to put a button into the titlebar twice– so, for example, you can’t have a close button on the left and also on the right hand side.
There is no particular reason for this: it was merely an artifact of the original code which has [...]
March 18, 2009 – 12:00 am
GNOME bug 107012 brings up the perennial question of SVG support in themes, otherwise known as Vectacity. We’ve already covered this in a few places, but I think it may be worth mentioning here the two main reasons SVG-based themes is a good thing (there may be any number of other reasons they’re a [...]
March 16, 2009 – 12:00 am
GNOME bug 102548 suggests that warning dialogues should have a special frame style, and it’s suggested that this could look like safety tape wrapped around the edge.
This is not unlike the special frame style suggested here for root windows. However, while there’s already a way for the window manager to tell whether a window [...]
March 11, 2009 – 12:00 am
At present all lines are drawn at the same thickness. However, some people such as partially-sighted users require particularly thick lines . GNOME bug 86040 suggests that the line format be extended to give the width as a fraction of the current icon height.
Since this is a change to the format, it must appear first [...]
Metacity has a policy about enhancements which require changes to the theme format. Metacity has to be both backwards and forward compatible. In other words, it’s not enough that a later version of Metacity can run with themes intended for an earlier version. Earlier versions must also be able to run with themes intended for [...]
February 23, 2009 – 12:20 pm
Someone is working on a Metacity theme editor called Metacity Themer. It appears to take rather a different approach from Opacity; it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. I’m not sure whether I should abandon Opacity; I wasn’t working on it anyway much (though I had thought about it quite a [...]
February 7, 2009 – 8:56 pm
Four points of note in theming today. Your thoughts on these, gentle reader, are appreciated.
Screwtape has been working on a Metacity theme to look like Mac OS Classic. The resulting list of tips and tricks for writing Metacity themes ought to be required reading for all themers. Screwtape, would you mind if we linked to [...]
syndicate