[Proposal] Meta themes spec.

[Stephan Arts]

On 6/12/07, Alberto Ruiz - Sun Microsystems - Dublin Ireland
<Alberto.Ruiz at sun.com> wrote:
> Stephan Arts wrote:
> > On 6/12/07, Matthias Clasen <matthias.clasen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 6/11/07, Thomas Wood <thos at gnome.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Stephan,
> >>>
> >>> Regarding your Metathemes proposal, it all sounds good and
> >>> similar to what we basically have in GNOME already. However, in GNOME
> >>> we use a .desktop style file to describe what the package contains.
> >>> Currently this can be any combination of icon, gtk+, metacity themes,
> >>> and a gtk+ colour scheme string. It can also indicate font names and
> >>> sizes, and a wallpaper (although in the theme manager, these are only
> >>> implemented as "suggestions"). The data for the themes are then kept in
> >>> specified directories within the archive. For the most part, this also
> >>> means that simply extracting the archive to ~/.themes should be
> >>> sufficient to install it.
> >>>
> >>> GNOME has recently introduced a custom mime type to allow easier
> >>> installation of theme packages. However, it has not yet achieved wide
> >>> spread adoption and I think there would be little opposition to
> >>> replacing it with a freedesktop.org specification.
> >>>
> >>> I would be happy to help out with the creation and adoption of a
> >>> freedesktop.org specification for these types of archives.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> I think the first step would be to describe the existing approach in
> >> some detail,
> >> to see what (if any) changes are desirable to turn in into a freedesktop spec.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Good idea, I took the liberty of creating a wiki-page on
> > wiki.xfce.org[1] with the things about the format I thought I knew.
> >
> > On 6/11/07, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz at gnome.org> wrote:
> >
> >>> <snip>
> >>>
> >> I did the job to create the new MIME, and I don't have any opposition at all. In fact, I tried > to start a thread like this before I started the gnome implementation. I think that define a > > standard MIME for theme package could be a good start, and from there, start working on > how different theme elements can be together inside this MIME type.
> >>
> >> In fact, create a new one should be as easy as rename the current .gtp (Gnome theme
> >> package) to .dtp (desktop theme pacakge) or something like that, any comments?
> >>
> >
> > I have taken a look at it, and I think you could be right.
> >
> > However, for a general desktop-theme-package some adjustments need to
> > be made to allow other themes to be included too. For example, ppl
> > tend to replace metacity by sawfish in Gnome, or xfwm4 by openbox in
> > Xfce. It would be nice if the format would provide means to
> > (optionally) include a theme for both window-managers and let the
> > software handle which to install. Or, in a more realistic matter:
> > create one theme which works with both Gnome and Xfce default setups.
> >
> > @Alberto:
> > Could you please take a look at the wiki-page[1] and complete/fix the
> > description of the .gtp package format? Then we have some concrete
> > information to talk about. :-)
> >
> >
> Done, anything else to add, it's a very simple hack, I wonder if I
> should even call it hack.

Thank you, I modified it a little more myself with the information I
retrieved from the theme-manager source-code. (Thanks to Thomas for
pointing it out to me)

Anyways, I have created a draft a while back[1]. It was made for the
sole purpose of being shot at.
Would you all please take a look at it?

There is room reserved for License, Version and Author information
which might be interesting to incorporate in a spec.

It is a document I wrote to start the initial discussion on the
xfce-dev mailing-list. (with some modifications based on the comments
received there)

--
Stephan

[1] http://mocha.foo-projects.org/~stephan/meta-themes-spec.html