Plasma Themes (for all plasma devs)

[pinheiro]

A Saturday 19 April 2008 13:32:46, Aaron J. Seigo escreveu:
> 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.

ok a litle explanation. on the several elements.....
ok for full with bar we have content and top, 2 elements x 4 = 8 plus shadow 
+4 = 12 This in non hardaware acel mode. 
for acel mode its nice to have 2 shadows so 16

ok now for scalable pannels 9 elements  and 8 shadows on non acel.
and for acel 9 + 16 (double shadow again)

for normal themeing  we have the usual 9 elements

so 12 + 16 + 9 + 8 + 9 + 16 + 9 = 79

But we will nedd to do the svg's to theme the panel iner elements aswell and 
couse we need to do the spacing its 9 for each element.

Ofcourse we can strip down elements but it wont looks as nice...  
 
this may looks like alot of elements but its not, and i can not see doing a 
theme for for a pannel that does not have them all, the issue might be wen 
its aplied to all plasmoids!


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