Thinking ahead: some FC7 ideas

[Máirín Duffy]

Luya Tshimbalanga wrote:
> Given there is not a schedule for FC7, it would be a good opportunity to
> work on icons rather than waiting.

Is anybody waiting to work on them? If anyone wants to work on them and 
help the effort, then by all means go ahead. I didn't know that anyone 
was waiting and I wasn't proposing that they should.

>> * Legacy artwork from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 6 should be added for 
>> users looking to have them. Packaging them in Fedora Extras might be a 
>> good way.
>>
>> That's a cool idea, but is it then okay to have the release numbers in 
>> the artwork? (Would be weird to have FC6-specific artwork in FC7, for 
>> example?) Should we make it a policy to leave release numbers out? 
>> (makes it impossible then to come up with release-version specific 
>> artwork such as the c6re [2] logo.)
> 
> It does not need to have release numbers. Simply add a description of
> the artwork.

I think you misunderstood me...? What I mean is, for the future, should 
we set a policy of not integrating the release numbers in the artwork so 
folks can use whichever theme from whichever release without worrying 
about version numbers specifically being on the artwork?

Right now we do not have such a policy. We have in the past, in the 
early days of Fedora, I think because we weren't sure if there would be 
time to do artwork for each release so we didn't want a new release 
stuck with the old releases' number all over it.

Is this what you are proposing - reinstituting the 'no release numbers 
in artwork' policy?

>> * It appears Cairo engine is very stable. It will be be nice to for some 
>> people to generate an enhanced Clearlook theme for Fedora Core 7.
>>
>> Developing a theme is pretty difficult & time-consuming but if we can 
>> get some good mockups early on then it'd be easier to hit FC7.
>>
> 
> True. We could take a example from
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/ThemeConcepts . It will be nice to
> provide a tutorial for artists who never designed a desktop theme.

There's the one example there that I brought up back in July that nobody 
seemed too crazy over.

There are already some good GTK and metacity theming tutorials around 
the web. Here are some good ones:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/metacity/metacity-themes.html
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials/GtkThemes
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials/GtkEngines

I can add these to the wiki. But honestly, and I've said this before, if 
anybody has a kickass theme mockup, just a flat picture in vector format 
(bitmap could be ok too if it's high enough resolution), I personally 
would be willing to try to at least make a pixmap theme out of it so we 
could try it out. Please don't let technical limitations or 
implementation complexity discourage you from mocking up something cool 
- because there's always a way to actually build something given the 
design we're building towards is truly kick-ass.

>> * Since there is a lot KDE users, provide the artworks to smoothly blend 
>> with Gnome applications.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by smoothly blend with GNOME applications? Do 
>> you mean the theming work for GNOME should also be done for KDE? Is 
>> anybody on the list a KDE user or knowledgable about KDE such they could 
>> advise us on this?
> 
> Right. We would like to avoid conflicts from desktop environment as
> possible (the inevitable complain how X DE looks better than Y in
> fanatic perspective). It will be great to get people working from
> different DE like xfce, blackbox, enlightment to participate. It is
> challenging but I think it is worth a try.

Do you want to take up the task of recruiting folks from those 
communities then?

>> * Making Anaconda look very pleasant without compromising the performance.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean here - the colors available? The design of 
>> the screens? Some things there isn't a whole lot there can be done about 
>> because of technical limitations. If there are specific issues we want 
>> to target let's create a list and I can discuss it with Jeremy Katz and 
>> see how much is possible.
> 
> An example, custom installation screen looks okay but it needs more
> polish. Current color can be kept. We will need to get the list of
> technical limitations of Anaconda so we can work around them. Now that
> Glade3 is released, we need work on that tool to see what can be done or
> not.

What do you mean by polish? It just seems vague to me. How are you 
envisioning it looking and how do you specifically see the current look 
of anaconda not meeting that goal?

It's hard to come up with a list of technical limitations without 
knowing what your goal is. Specifications for artwork is one thing - we 
can list out the dimensions, color depth, file format, etc requirements 
for anaconda and I believe they already have been listed in the wiki. 
But as far as technical limitations for design, you've really got to 
propose a design before we can definitively list out the technical 
limitations. Anything is possible, it's just a matter of how much work 
it would require and what policies it might encroach upon.

~m