The default theme for F12

[William Jon McCann]

Hey,

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Bill Nottingham<notting at redhat.com> wrote:
> Matthias Clasen (mclasen at redhat.com) said:
>> Hey all,
>>
>> we've been discussing the idea of changing the default GTK+/Metacity
>> theme in F12. Nodoka has been the default for a while, and it seems to
>> undergo a major rework now ( http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/ ).
>>
>> We don't want to do a radical visual change, though. The idea is to go
>> back to the upstream default, Clearlooks.
>
> Well, that would still be a visual change. Given that he's restarting
> nodoka from scratch, that would leave the options as being either:
> - go to clearlooks
> - stay with the old nodoka version

For now we want to stay with upstream Clearlooks.

There are a few reasons for this.  Roughly:

 * Goals
    I don't agree with the stated goal of the Nodoka theme to make
something that looks uniquely Fedora which also includes an icon
theme.  A better goal is to look good and be well integrated with the
platform we are building upstream in GNOME.

 * Alignment
   We have a number of pretty major and interesting things going on in
GNOME that will appear before, during, or shortly after the F12 cycle.
 Some of these are client side decorations, a new theme drawing
library, new high resolution icons, and GNOME Shell.  Any and all of
which really change what we want from a theme.  We want to be working
very closely with the upstream design, art, and theme community in
order to keep the design and development loop as efficient as
possible.  For now, it seems that the consensus opinion in the
upstream community is that clearlooks is the best engine on which to
base further work.

 * Experience
   This one is going to be somewhat subjective and prone to a whole
lot of bikeshedding.  I don't think Nodoka is where we want to be.
I'm not sure it is all that helpful to go down a list of things that
don't look right.  Especially since there are things that we'd also
like to change in Clearlooks.  But I think Clearlooks is currently
closer to what we want and probably a better base on which to work.

> Also, would we be changing the icon set?

The current default is Mist, right?  Can someone describe for me the
exact differences between Mist and GNOME?  Seems to me that they are
similar.  Looks like the folder icons are blue in Mist and tan in
GNOME.  Given that the theme "selected" color changes the window
decorations and controls (not to mention the wallpaper) I'm not sure I
like choosing a non-neutral color for the folder icons.  Other than
that what is different?

With the recent changes in GNOME to limit the number of icons used in
menus and buttons this is less important than it would be otherwise.
However, there are a number of key areas where icons are still very
important.  We'll also want to keep an eye on both the high resolution
icons stuff and the moblin icon theme.

Jon