XFCE - look-and-feel configuration.

[SJM Arts]

----- Original Message -----
From: Aaron <aaronf0 at gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 9:26 pm
Subject: Re: XFCE - look-and-feel configuration.
> ok, as a user, and also a programmer, heres the groups i would put 
> them in
> 
> UI
> -desktop, UI (rename to themes?) WM, and WM tweaks, screensaver, 
> splash screen
>   all of these are graphical in nature, not backend stuff. when the
> user changes this they see it.
> 
> Hardware
> -mouse display keyboard, printer
>   mouse might go under ui, just because of the themes...
> 
> Backend
> -calendar, preffered apps, shortcuts, workspaces, and sessions
>   stuff the user wont really see, more behind the scenes magik
> 
> Personnaly, while this would be very not-cool from a programmers
> sense, i would group all the themes into one module, so from one area
> you can change mouse, windeco, and gtk themes. i see that being hell
> for the programmers, but much easier to find things as the user, also
> fixes the why isnt {blank} changing when i use {blank} theme. if they
> can see all the lists infront of them, it would be easier.
> 
> I would also make icon themes its own box, and put the fonts stuff in
> a new box, maybe grouped with display? i would also set the window
> manager font from the central font box next to the ui font.
> 
> in the window manager box, i would make the button layout thing
> displayed on top of a mock-up of the current theme, with three main
> areas, left, right, and title, bassicly showing the user what it looks
> like (this one is quite eccentric, but something like kde 3.3's WM
> dialog. i would also rename the keyboard tab to something like
> shortcuts, and find a way to differentiate it from the real shortcut
> manager, as in this one is just for moving windows, not launching
> apps. i would also rename the advanced tab in the WM box to something
> like snapping or moving, and then take the stuff from the WM tweak box
> and make that the advanced tab.
> 
> in the window manager tweak box, i would make the composite tab its
> own button, labeled transparency (i know not technical, but everyone
> seems to get the point...)
> 
> also on the mouse/keyboard boxes, i would make them box called
> hardware, with diffrent tabs for mouse and keyboard. maybe even put
> the printer and display plugins in there?
> 
> 
> 
> good luck on understanding and interpretting that, i know i wasnt too
> clear on all the parts, feel free to ask for clarification.
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> 

These things are not exactly impossible to add. It requires one change
to the plugin struct, a pointer to indicate the 'group' (should that be
a char * or an u_int) can be enough for the individual plugin programmers.

These groups can then be used to display the plugins.

I have made a partial implementation of this, but i think it requires a
lot more rewriting of the mcs-manager code to make it a clean
implementation... I mean, when implementing this on-top of the existing
mcs-manager code it is hard to keep it fast. It might be too much overhead.

Stephan