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List:       kde-artists
Subject:    Re: Default style [was Re: kdelibs/kstyles/b3plugin]
From:       Michael Reiher <michael.reiher () gmx ! de>
Date:       2000-03-21 19:54:54
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My opinion to the default theme:

Independent from whether I like the B* style there is one thing that
bothers me about it. It looks like BeOS(surprise:). KDE 1.x always
looked like exsisting toolkits, Windows and Motif. We have now the great
technical possiblity to create a default look for KDE how ever we want.
And now that we have it we make KDE per derfault look like another OS. I
mean there is nothing wrong to emulate existing toolkits But what I
would really like to see is a default look that is unique to KDE.
(Perhaps even in a low and a highcolor version.) And that we can keep
with only slight modifications for quite some time. 

Someday people will know it. Screenshot in magazines or demo boxes at
fairs often use KDE as it comes out of the box. At the moment they might
wonder 'is this windows or what??'. With a unique KDE look they see a
screenshot and know right away 'This is  KDE'. Or at least they know
that is none of the common OSses.

Some time ago there was a mail (I think from Mosfet) encouraging people
to write styles. But AFAICS nothing happend. Perhaps the problem is that
the styles need to be *written*. But many artistically talented people
are no programmers. I tried to program a style myself but I failed on
the *artistic* stuff. Well, I´m no artist:)

So what I would propose is a kind of a goint venture between artists and
developers. Artists can do the styles as pixmaped themes and some
developers can hack it into code then. Yes, I would volunteer for that
part. I think that would give the best results in terms of good look on
the one hand and speed, effects on the other hand. The artist mailing
list would perhaps serve as a good forum. There´s not much traffic
anyway.

What do you think? 
Comments? Opinions? Flames?

Greets

Michael

-- 
Michael Reiher
     Student at Dresden University of Technology
          Department of Computer Science
               email: michael.reiher@gmx.de

"Beware the woods at night, beware the lunar light!"

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