Re: GNUstep and Theming...

[David Chisnall]

On 7 Jan 2009, at 15:05, Gregory John Casamento wrote:

> The best we can do is the same that either one of GNOME or KDE do  
> and that is to provide themes that match the other very closely.    
> Using native widgets is out of the question in most cases.

The suggestion was not to use GTK+ or Qt objects, but to use their  
theme engines.  This is what Swing does in recent versions of Java.   
It doesn't use GTK+ drawing routines, but it does load the pixmaps  
that GTK+ applications use for drawing widgets.

Once the theme support in GNUstep is a bit more integrated, this will  
be possible using a theme engine similar to Camaelon which provides  
pixmaps.  Possibly some code from Camaelon can then be refactored out  
to provide a common functionality for Windows and GTK pixmap providers.

My understanding is that themes will be integrated into GNUstep as a  
two-tier approach:

AppKit objects delegate drawing to an GSTheme subclass.
A GSTheme subclass provided by a theme engine handles drawing.

A GSTheme subclass provided by Camaelon will draw using pixmaps from a  
bundle.  A GSTheme subclass provided for a Windows theme engine will  
draw using pixmaps acquired from the Windows theme API.  Another theme  
engine could draw using pixmaps provided by GTK+ theme bundles.

David