Re: Look and Feel

[Gregory John Casamento]

Stefan,

--- stefan@agentfarms.net wrote:

> Citát Gregory John Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Themes in GNUstep are a very different beast than in GNOME or KDE. 
> > Typically,
> > themes override certain portions of the drawing code in GNUstep to achieve
> a
> > new look.  GNUstep is a complex piece of work and the creation of a new
> look
> > for it is, by no means, a simple task. 
> > 
> 
> I thought that theme support is included in GUI by a class and creating a
> theme
> is just replacing only that class, is not that true? AFAIR, there was such
> class created for this purpose, or not?

This is correct.
 
> If that is not true, then I think that GUI/AppKit should be changed to
> support
> themes natively by delegating drawing of UI elements to some class. Having a
> theme bundle to replace drawing methods by poseAs: can be considered a hack.
> We
> are in OO world, then it should be not too difficult to have a class with
> methods more methods. Currently there is GSDrawFunctions with methods:
> 
> + (NSRect) drawButton: (NSRect)border : (NSRect)clip;
> + (NSRect) drawDarkButton: (NSRect)border : (NSRect)clip;

<snip>

> Then GUI should not use drawing by using bezier paths nor DPS operators, it
> should use ONLY functions from the "theme class". With this, complete
> themability can be achieved without it being a hack, as it is now. This
> desing
> is much cleaner and straightforward. Theme creator does not have to dig into
> the AppKit classes to find out "what should be overriden to make the theme
> work", moreover the theme  developer will not end by uncomplete theme, as he
> knows everything that he should implement.

All true.   My point was that this is not easy for the average user who doesn't
know how to code.   Whereas with KDE/GNOME/etc it's a matter of creating a few
textures and pixmaps etc.

> Stefan Urbanek 


=====
Gregory John Casamento 
-- CEO/President Open Logic Corp. (A MD Corp.)
## Maintainer of Gorm (IB Equiv.) for GNUstep.