KDE Theme Manager

[Aaron J. Seigo]

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hi all...

perhaps it is time for the Theme Manager control panel to be put out to 
pasture. i say this because:

 o it has some rather nasty bugs, including one that causes KDE to become 
completely unstable. (BR#62801) this has been reported more than once on 
b.k.o as well as on IRC and mailing lists. =/

 o it duplicates the functionality of KDE's native theming capabilities, which 
only serves to make the Appearance & Themes kcontrol section even less clear 
and more cluttered.

 o development seems to be slow/lagging[1]. in spite of being around for quite 
some time, it has some very nasty defects and things like the Create... 
button are, as far as i can tell, completely useless due to being only 
partially implemented. for something as visible and important as a "Theme 
Manager" i don't think this casts a good light on KDE.

 o the theming method it uses is rather antequated, to say the least, and does 
not  utilize KDE's standard theming systems. as such it represents a 
duplication of efforts for results that aren't up to what KDE is capable of.

 o we only ship with a handful of themes, none of which are all that 
flattering for KDE's image, IMHO. i seemto remember some of these themes from 
the KDE1 days. the Default theme's screenshot even shows a KDE2 desktop!

now, i'm sure that there are people out there who use and even like the Theme 
Manager, as is true with every part of KDE no matter how many warts it has =) 
to those people i'd suggest making it a stand-alone KDE add-on that can be 
downloaded seperately.

thoughts?

[1] there were a few commits by Waldo this year to do things like add font 
support, but those were relatively small changes code-wise. lukas seems to be 
the primary contributor to it; he made a substantial commit in October of 
'02, and a port of KDE2 patches in February of '02. 
- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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