Re: GUI without X11 / Artist Help

[Nicolas Roard]

Le 8 févr. 05, à 21:09, Olivier Migeot a écrit :

> Le Mardi 8 Février 2005 21:17, jesse@jesseross.com a écrit :
>
> > As another direction (and maybe this is going too far or me being 
> > more of
> > a designer than a programmer), but would it be possible to do PNG/JPG
> > mockups of what we'd like to see as the future direction of the GUI 
> > (per
> > the competition I mentioned earlier), pull the best features and 
> > ideas,
> > and use that as the template for building the components we would 
> > need?
>
> Doing mockups before the actual thing is, IMHO, really important 
> indeed.

Yes, as much as possible, we should do mockups, that's a quite evident 
:-)

> Now
> that we're talking about GNUstep look, I'd like to put a few things...
>
> As some of us stated before, there are some people that enjoy the 
> current
> GNUstep look. And there are people wanting things to change. It's very
> unlikely that one group will manage to convince the other.

Probably true, yes.

> So I think there
> should be (at least) two themes bundled with GNUstep:
>
> * the nextish look we all now. But I don't think it should be the 
> default one,
> it should be more something like a "tribute to NeXT" theme.

I think it should be a first-class citizen, not just a tribute..
ie, applications should look ok with both themes.

> * some new one. And I think some discussion (and mockups, and maybe 
> even a
> design contest) is highly needed for this to succeed. So I'll try to 
> throw
> some raw ideas, do what you want with it:
>
> First, I think we should clearly define what is covered by a "theme". 
> IMHO, it
> should at least describe controls, titlebars, menus and font. Probably 
> icons,
> too.

Ok, here I step in... Camaelon lets you redefine any widgets; at the 
moment, a Camaelon
theme include all the pixmaps needed to draw widgets. Including icons 
in the theme
works too, even if using IconKit would be better (ie, if you put the 
icons in the theme, it will
work; but Camaelon should use IconKit on top of that).

About the fonts, it's a good idea.. but it's a bit difficult to do that 
properly (should you bundle
the fonts with the theme ? but in that case, you'll have a problem 
either with xlib or art..)

> Then, if we want to bring a "NEWstep" (bad pun intended) theme, we 
> should
> brought up some "visual identity" for GNUstep, i.e. some things that 
> would
> unlikely change even if we decide to change the default theme. The 
> goal is
> that someone seeing GNUstep on a friend's computer or - even better - 
> in a
> movie (let's dream a bit, will ya?) could recognize it quickly and 
> tell "hey,
> I know that thing, it's GNUstep, it's so cool, ...". It's more or less 
> like a
> brand.

I entirely agree ! we can, with Camaelon, support themes. That's fine 
and all, it will
probably help attracting users, it will perhaps also help for Windows.. 
but we shouldn't
just say "choose whatever you want..". We need a good default theme. At 
the moment
it's the NeXT theme.

The NeXT theme is *extremely* well done, but has two problems; first, 
the gamma
-- it needs a properly configured display. Second, it looks a bit 
ancient.. and the icons
we have at the moment don't really help here -- that's why we started 
with quentin
the icon's effort.

So yes, I believe we should keep it, but we should have another theme, 
more
modern-looking.
And this other theme should ideally be some kind of continuity of the 
NeXT theme,
not a playskool or aqua-like theme. If users wants playskool themes 
they will have
Camaelon anyway. But we need something that people can associate with 
GNUstep
(..in a *good* way ;-)

> Some exemple of a "visual identity", according to my personal taste, 
> so you're
> all free to think it's crap:
>
> * Grey is important. I know "outside" people are criticizing the grey 
> touch a
> lot, but I think it's the first thing you notice about it. "Hey, that 
> thing
> is  ... grey, isn't it?". Most of modern computer GUIs are using white
> things, so it would be a nice way to "think different". And keeping 
> grey
> controls would allow us to make icons more important, by making them 
> much
> more colourful.

I agree. Gray is good. Jacky users don't like that, but we don't care; 
more people
will prefer a readable theme (that was exactly what a guy in his 50-60 
told me last
year at the fosdem -- what he liked with gnustep was the clean and 
resting look).
Furthermore, I don't think "gray" is the problem -- just look at 
Apple's metal UI !
The problem is more with the widgets' shape and look than with a gray 
tonality :-)

> * The controls are maybe a bit too square, but maybe we shouldn't make 
> them
> round like an Apple. There should be some compromise.

I think we should have more round shapes. We need a good balance.

> * Different kinds of fonts may be used, like in a typed text: "sans 
> serif"
> fonts for captions, "serif" ones for longer text, and fixed weight one 
> for
> console text (for example).

well, that's already easily doable (just play with Preferences.app), 
it's more
a question of fonts availability and standard defaults..

> Those were just examples, but I really think we should build some set 
> of rules
> like this.
>
> Just a last word about the fonts: I think a theme should be bound to a 
> set of
> font. The Vera set may be the best fit, since it high quality and 
> opensource
> compliant. But I'm not sure whether it's providing asian character 
> sets,
> which can be a problem for a "default" font.

Well, it's not easy to bind a font with a theme... GNUstep works with 
the PostScript
name, not the font by itself.. I don't know..

thanks,

--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 -Arthur C. Clarke