Plasma Themes (for all plasma devs)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 18 April 2008, Ivan Čukić wrote:
> - more and more rendering /hints/ in the SVG files.

why do you consider this a problem? i think this is a very nice and elegant 
solution as it is self-contained within the svg and doesn't require coding.

> - inconsistency between hints - hint-stretch-borders and hint-tile-center
>   (one hint is for turning on the stretching, and the other one is for
>   switching it off)

an "API review" of these would indeed be nice. not critical, per say, but 
would a decent use of time imho.

> - more and more groups in SVG file (81 different groups for panel - quoting
>   Nuno on this one)

i think 81 is a bit much. Nuno tends to go for the moon on these things, which 
is good as it keeps stretching us, but we also need to provide some breaks 
for him sometimes ;) 9 items per edge is 36 ... forget shadows, etc. 36 is 
still large, but the strategy is:

we support simpler themes with fewer elements in them by falling back, 
allowing those who care to to create complex themes full of elements and 
those who don't to create simpler themes with minimal numbers of elements.

> - more and more prefixes

this is due, at least in part, to the oddness of trying to get geometry 
perfect. i honestly haven't seen the need for all of this and am somewhat 
relying on the artists to give decent direction.

> And still, there is so much that can not be done with this ever-growing
> implementation of themes.

what in particular are you considering?

> In our last discussion on this topic, I was generally on the 'it is just ok
> the way it is now' side because I thought that we will not wish for the
> more advanced themes.
>
> Now, when I see that we will have 81 different groups only for the panel's
> background, I have to ask whether we can do this in a more elegant way.

suggestions?

i'm completely against going for anything that requires writing code because 
that locks out virtually all designers. if we're edging towards ever greater 
complexity so that we will find ourselves in a very awkward situation down 
the line, then the artists need to stop themselves, sit down and FORCE 
themselves to answer hard questions with good answers.

i do see a tendency amongst the artists to just come up with answers to the 
obvious question without actually stepping back, looking for the root 
question and then coming up with the hard answers. perhaps it's a discipline 
not common among them as the whole "making efficient art for runtime systems" 
is pretty niche.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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