From kde-core-devel Thu Jun 13 07:09:40 2002 From: Vadim Plessky Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 07:09:40 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: kde 3.1 -- make Keramik default? X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=102395215326242 On Wednesday 12 June 2002 1:21 am, Fredrik Höglund wrote: | On Sunday 09 June 2002 09:27, Vadim Plessky wrote: | > On Saturday 01 June 2002 9:40 pm, Torsten Rahn wrote: | > | | > | http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=1961-3.png | > | > I do not think that this screenshot looks good. | > A whole screen looks flashy (which is not bad) and inconsistent (which | > is bad). | > On top of it, fonts are not anti-aliased on that screenshot which really | > takes you back by year or 2 years from now. Even Mozilla supports AA in | > custom builds nowdays! | | I hardly think the point of this screenshot is showing what KDE looks | like with anti-aliased fonts, but rather showing the combined effect | of the color scheme, the widget style, the window decoration, and the | icon set, as compared to the screenshot where the style is used | with the default icon set and color scheme. I agree with you. And can repeat once more: badly looking fonts affect KDE as a whole ennvironment. As about "default icon set and color scheme" - Keramik should exactly *RESPECT* color scheme. If you want some color schemes for testing - take any of my KDE mini-Themes (http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/) which is in fact *color scheems* packed into KDE Theme format, with screenshot & other nice things. I like Keramik a lot. And I like my color schemes. So, it would be cool to use them together. But Keramik should get rid of coloured pixmaps first. (I run Blue Fantasy on my desktop at a moment, and it really loooks cool with KDE2 HiColor Window Decorations; I just disabled stipple effect to make it looking better) | | > Crystal Icon theme takes you back, too. | > Ok, I have nothing against Folder icon, this one is very good. | > But the rest of icon sets lacks "contouring" line around icon (in | > contrast color), so icon loses border. Effect from this is very bad. | > | > Now about Keramik Window Decorations itself. | > 1) how can I switch Rounded corners off? | > I don't like those rounded corners for several reasons. | | The rounded corners is sort of the whole point of this window | decoration, there's no way to turn them off, nor will there ever | be an option to do that. If you don't like shaped windows you | shouldn't be using this deco. I really sorry to hear this. I frequently do screenshots of different windows, and rounded corners do no tlook good on those screenshots 9they bacame *black* when you capture window) Besides, I do not think that spending extra CPU cycles worth rounded corners. At least people with slow CPUs or not most-modern video cards should have possibility to swicth them off. | | > 2) colors, and *style* for Maximize/Restore, and even for Close and | > Minimize, look terrible. They should not be of Black color, and Pixmaps | > for them should be configurable | | If they shouldn't be black, what color would you suggest? The idea Button Background/Foreground from default Color Scheme. | is that they will be either black or white depending on the brightness | of the button color in the color scheme. With the current color | they're obviously too bright for the symbols to be white. As for the | symbols themselves, they're designed to match the style of the | symbols used in the widget style, and they were designed by | the same artist. Ok, than it's better to make symbols configurable. What about to have an option to replace pixmaps (which AFAIK grayscale pixmaps) with some other from the disk/theme? | | > // BTW: what about using SVG for those buttons, instead of pixmaps? With | > recent SVG support in KDE this sounds quite reasonable. | | As I'm sure you're aware, the decision has been made to use hand | painted pixmaps for icons smaller than 22x22 pixels, because SVG | icons simply won't look acceptable at those sizes. The titlebar | buttons are 17x17 pixels (that's 16x16 plus an additional row and | column for the shadow). Titel bar buttons have size which you define for them. I was doing KDE2 themes (for siome reasons, KDE3 is not compatible in theme format with it?) and many titel bar buttons hadve 22x22 size in my themes. | | Furthermore the buttons are not intended to be scalable, so what | exactly would the advantage be of using SVG here? It would degrade 1) color match (color scheme)? 2) have you thought aboyt screens with >100dpi resolution, say, 150dpi or 200dpi? Do you know how many troubles hard-coded pixmaps create for those screens/resolutions? | image quality and slow down initialization time (since it would | take quite a while to render the images) while offering no | advantage whatsoever. There is possibility to cache. | | > 3) it's realy bad UI design - when you combine both Round (circle) and | > Rectangle buttons in *one* themes | | The descision made by qwertz was to make the most important | buttons square, and the less important ones round. Again: doesn't sound wise to me. If this design was intentional than it's mistake. | | > On top of it, KDE2 default Window Decoration has these options: | > 4) draw grab bar below windows | > | > 5) draw titlebar stipple effect | > | > which make it superior to many other styles. | > Until you can control "grab bar" and add/remove stipple effects (or | > gradients) in Keramik - it should not go as default KDE 3.1 theme. | | Havoc Pennington recently wrote an article on his website | (http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html) that you | might want to read, that deals with the subject of configurability | versus usability. That article has been discussed quite extensively | on this mailing list, and the views that are expressed there have | been confirmed by usability studies conducted by Eazel and | Sun Microsystems. I've tried to adhear to the findings of those | studies when designing the configuration tab for this deco. I have to admit that I haven't read that article. I will look at it later. BTW: Eazel and especially Sun are not good example to quote about "usability". Eazel was bankrupted (nice example, ehh?..), Sun has a lot of troubles nowdays and its focus primary on server market. So, I see no pionjt quoting those 2 companies. As about Havoc Pennington - if I wanted to use GNOME, I could use it. My choice is KDE, and it's done. Thanks! | | Those ideas are being adopted in quite a few places in KDE. | You might want to take a look at the HEAD version of the | config dialog for kicker, and compare that to the one in | the release version of KDE 3.0. | | > oh, and the most important priblem: | > WHY KERAMIK DOESN'T RESPECT KDE COLOR THEMES? | | That question was answered by me almost two weeks ago on this | mailing list, see | http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=102286945019871&w=2 | | In the meantime there's patch created by Rik Hemsley that you | can try that enables the experimental recoloring code in CVS, | see http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=102295981016327&w=2 | | Unfortunatly it's a common misconception these days that when | something has committed to CVS, it has also been released to the | public. I can assure you that that is not the case. Neither the | widget style nor the window deco have been released yet, not even | as alpha versions. It is not a requirment that work is finished by | the time it's committed to CVS. Only that is finished at release | time. | | That someone chooses to check unreleased code out of CVS, package | it and upload it to kde-look doesn't change that fact. | | If you choose to use the HEAD version of KDE or anything else | that's being developed under CVS, you cannot expect all features | to be implemented, nor that the code is free of bugs. Yes, right, I see your point and agree. Just wanted to make some comments to bes ure that Keramik is usable when released ;-) | | > I have tried several ones, and even KDE's default (rather dark blue) | > color is not respected, not speaking about other nice color themes I | > have here. | | The style does not attempt to mimic the default color scheme. | That is quite intentional, and as it's pointed out in the email | you're replying to, the style doesn't look all that good with | the current default color scheme. So, what about trying with my color themes? I amaware that KDE's default color schems are not very good. That's why I developed my ones. My mini-Themes/Color Schemes were extensively tested with different KDE styles (works fine with Quartz, for example, in addition to KStep and KLaptop and KDE default) | | Regards, | Fredrik -- Vadim Plessky http://kde2.newmail.ru (English) 33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html KDE mini-Themes http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/