Clean up default theme and wallpaper collection

[Pasi Lallinaho]

On 06/23/2011 12:56 AM, Nick Schermer wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Pasi Lallinaho
> <pasi at shimmerproject.org> wrote:
>> I just added a new item in the Design SIG wiki.
>>
>> The Xfce default collection of themes (both GTK and xfwm) and wallpapers
>> is a bit out-of-date. We really should make it 2011.
> Well the desktop will be a new module for 4.10 (if everything goes as
> planned), but imho we should just have 1 nice Xfce wallpaper (big for
> 2012 screens) and nothing else. It only increases the package size and
> most people will change it anyway.
>
Okay, so why isn't this in the design SIG wikipage yet? :)
>> This would mean removing a bunch of the old looking themes and include
>> some new; I'm proposing to include the Shimmer themes, which have had
>> good feedback when used as Xubuntu default themes.
> The only themes are a bunch of them in the gtk engine, but for example
> the shimmer themes depend on the murrine engine, not a dependency we
> want for the core.
Right, I didn't consider that.
> That doesn't mean there is room for improvement, but the Xfce core
> doesn't need to become a complete xunbuntu layout as well.
Yes, I agree. The idea is not to make the core Xubuntu layout, but
provide the user some theme choices which they really can consider using.

I'm not saying this because I think the Shimmer themes are better than
anything else but because the default themes in Xfce right now are quite
ugly, and I couldn't really use those ever. And I think many people
think the same.

There is probably quite little that the design SIG can do about this, if
there is no consensus across the Xfce developers. I think the question
simply is if the Xfce developer team wants Xfce core to be as small as
possible and strip all dependencies, or, are they willing to add a
rather small dependency to be able to ship themes that bring Xfce looks
closer to what is objectively considered good-looking in 2011.

Waiting for an interesting discussion,
Pasi

-- 
Pasi Lallinaho                              » http://open.knome.fi/
Leader of the Shimmer Project               » http://shimmerproject.org/
Graphic artist, webdesigner, Ubuntu member  » IRC: knome @ freenode