2.0 Themes and Templating

[Reigo Reinmets]

Hei,

I'm one of the original Themeing support authors. Although the last time 
i touched amaroK's code was around a year ago i still remember most of it :)
Amarok's HTML is pretty much xhtml compliant(although it won't probably 
validate) and uses mostly divs with ID's and Classes. Although you can't 
do All in one themes currently because the html is different for all the 
tabs, but it does allow you to change the layout.. you could easly use 
fixed positioning or floatings to move the div's around. I think we even 
provided a list of all the possible ID and Class names with some example 
theme.

I quess for Amarok 2.0 alot will be changed, and hopefully somebody 
bothers to create some themeing support.. Currently it's pretty much 
static html.

PS: Creating a themeing engine as powerful as smarty would require umm.. 
around 1000 human-slave work hours i quess :) But a simpler one would 
probably be easyer to create. Maybe there already is something like that 
  in some strange KDE application? Quanta?

Gleb Litvjak wrote:
> On Sunday 18 March 2007 09:50:31 Emil Sedgh wrote:
>> AmaroK currently has Theme support for its Context Bar.But these themes are
>> not more than easy CSS Files.so Designers cannot change the real look of
>> the context bar.
>> I Suggest a Templating System to be used in 2.0 (like Smarty in PHP).
>> You pass some variables to HTML File and Theme.html (For example) which
>> Designer will include in his theme will use them.
>> with this, HTML Designers will able to implement Tabs (Lyrics, Music and
>> Wikipedia Page)with some Javascript in their HTML Themes if they want,
>> else, they could use theme all in once...and there could be hundreds of
>> different looks.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Amarok mailing list
>> Amarok at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok
> 
> Hello Emil,
> 
> I am a PHP programmer too, and use Smarty a lot. I like your idea, though I 
> see several difficulties:
> 
> Currently, Amarok itself generates the HTML files. To implement templates, 
> Amarok should either include a templating engine, or use an external one. 
> Moreover, this operation is more CPU-intensive (although this would be hard 
> to notice on modern systems). Also, this would require more work and skills 
> from theme designers (which could be partly solved by providing example 
> templates with comments).
> 
> I am not an Amarok developer, so my answer is not authoritative, just some 
> thoughts :)
> 
> Best regards,
> Gleb Litvjak
>