situation with window decorations

[Nuno Pinheiro]

A Quinta, 27 de Agosto de 2009 19:54:08 Frank Karlitschek você escreveu:
> On 27.08.2009, at 20:06, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Thursday 27 August 2009, Lucas Murray wrote:
> >> Oxygen = The way the designers want the decoration (Pixel perfect
> >> and not
> >> ugly!) Nitrogen = The way the users want the decoration (User
> >> customisable
> >> and better usability!)
> >
> > let's be thorough instead of glib. here are two sets of issues here:
> > defaults
> > and options.
> >
> > for defaults, it can be refined further:
> >
> > * appearance
> > * usability
> >
> > nitrogen still left justifies the title bar text by default, but it
> > turns off
> > the stripes. this all seems a bit random from the appearance POV.
> >
> > usability wise, i think it's a wash between the two still. neither is
> > remarkably better than the other.
> >
> > for options:
> >
> > oxygen's options are minimal and also poorly laid out in the
> > configuration
> > panel.
> >
> > nitrogen is a rather random slap-dash arrangement of things. wtf
> > does "KDE
> > 4.2" mean for "Button Style"? this is what makes me most nervous about
> > nitrogen: yes, it is trying to improve on oxygen, but it's doing it
> > like we're
> > back in KDE 3.1 and the name of the game is "lots of features and
> > don't worry
> > about the results!".
> >
> > if nitrogen wishes to win support, i'd suggest a few things:
> >
> > * don't dump it into kdebase until it's ready. that's what we have
> > playground
> > for.
> >
> > * pay attention to the configuration options and take care with what
> > options
> > are put where and how. e.g. if the options for Buttons is "KDE 4.2 "
> > and
> > "Default", then there really doesn't need to be an option. the
> > wording of the
> > rest of the options also should be looked at; it's far too geeky.
> >
> > * consider if things like a "drag handle" are needed or if that's
> > just there
> > to satisfy someone's personal itch; or how about those stripes: do
> > we _really_
> > need them at this point or can Oxygen keep them for those who like
> > them and we
> > can be done with them in Nitrogen?
>
> Yes. I personally don´t like the stripes. Just visual clutter.
> Lets go with Albert Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible,
> but not simpler."
> The stripes are not needed at least not with compositing enabled. So
> let´s remove them.

The story about the stripes, well it was one of the ideas i had to try to make 
some people happy and maybe give up on ozone, the stripes are colorable and 
give a visual hint to the active window... the next step we took was to make 
the active glow, that in non acel systems even paints the outside pixels of 
the windeco, still this was not enough to remove ozone.

Personally i think we will remove those option out of oxygen since they did 
not produced the expected results and in the case of the non acel version just 
looks bad (the options are the stripes and the active pixels around the 
windeco in non acel)

>
> > remembering that we _all_ pay for
> > additional configuration options due to config ui and code
> > maintenance.
> >
> > the good things in Nitrogen? it has those Exceptions which should
> > allow us to
> > tune it to work better with other applications. cool.
> >
> > but right now it seems like an honest attempt at compromise that is
> > leading to
> > a chaotic mix of features and configuration UI. work on the
> > elegance, which is
> > the ingredient that got us this far to begin with on the look front.
> >
> > personally i'd like to see just one window decoration in there, as
> > Frank seems
> > to be leaning towards as well. can Nitrogen be that? and can we also
> > drop the
> > silly "names of gasses" puns and just stick to Oxygen, so we can get
> > back to
> > building brand instead of making forks?
>
> Exactly.
>
> >> Unless the Oxygen team can live with the customisation settings (All
> >
> > let's leave ultimatums out of it until we have an actual impasse.
>
> Cheers
> Frank
>
>
> --
> Frank Karlitschek
> karlitschek at kde.org

-- 
Oxygen coordinator