Clean up default theme and wallpaper collection

[Pasi Lallinaho]

Hey Olivier,

On 06/23/2011 01:44 PM, Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> Hi
>
> Beauty is the eye of the beholder.
>
> I won't pretend to teach others what's good looking, nor how a 2011 or
> 2012 look may be like.

I don't pretend to teach others what is good looking either, but what
I've heard from a large group of the users, they simply want to use
other themes than the Xfce default themes, and this is where my main
argument to ship other themes as default comes from.

> Let's not confuse "trendy" and "beauty",  Not everyone is a fan of the
> murine engine (or any other theme for that matter), that's why you can
> change the theme, engine, colors, etc.

I agree on this. However, I still don't know many people who want to use
the Xfce default set of themes. Maybe I don't know the right people then.

> I reckon Xfce is to remain lightweight, themes and engines can add
> overhead as well, so xfce should ship a simple and fast theme, then
> users and distro packagers can (and will) choose to make whatever they
> want, but the core Xfce do not necessarily share the same goals.
>
> Don't make Xfce a Xubuntu clone, Xfce is not Xubuntu (nor Debian, nor
> Fedora, the list goes on). Xfce is distribution neutral, it should
> remain like that.

This is definitely not making Xfce a Xubuntu clone, actually, we'd like
it to be the exact opposite!

We value upstream very much, and the optimal situation would be that we
could work on an Xfce theme with the Xfce developer team, and then be
able to ship it to all the distros using Xfce.

Also, please remember, Shimmer is not a part of Xubuntu in any formal
way. Technically the project is an upstream for Xubuntu.

> Does not mean that things should remain static forever, but what we
> ship as default has to remain simple and should not drag too many
> unnecessary dependencies (yes, I do consider an external theme engine
> as an unnecessary dependency).
>
> If you want to help with defaults, please make your theme with the
> xfce engine or the default gtk engine, for the window manager, make
> sure the colors are taken from gtk as well so that if someone choose
> another gtk theme the colors remain coherent.

As Nick suggested, Xfce could advise distros to include a package with
the Shimmer (and why not other) themes in their Xfce group. I think this
is a fair way of achieving both the Xfce and Shimmer Project goals: the
Xfce core can stay minimalistic with it's gtk-xfce-engine/themes, but at
least the majority of Xfce users would have a choice to easily switch to
themes that appeal to them.

All this theme engine problematic should vanish or reduce to minimum
anyway when Xfce switches to GTK3.

> Cheers,
> Olivier
> _______________________________________________
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> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
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YT,
Pasi

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