Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [VI] Consistent theme for screenshots

Hi Alex, Sigrid et al

Le 2011-06-28 05:17, Alexander Thurgood a écrit :
> Le 28/06/11 10:34, Sigrid Carrera a écrit :
>
> Hi Sigrid,
>
>
> > I don't know. I don't own a Mac and I can't even afford one.
> >
> > But, do you know of a Theme, that is available on Mac, Windows and Linux? If so, please let us know.
> Well that is precisely my point. If there is no common theme available
> to all then the whole discussion is rather moot, don't you think ? There
> are aqua lookalike themes on Linux, as on Windows, but those themes
> probably only represent an ultraminority in usage on those OSes
> (possibly a bit more on Linux than on Windows, I really don't know).
>
> This leaves me with the following obvious questions / points :
>
> - do we produce separate stuff for the Mac ?  hmmm, possible, but very
> work intensive, and there are certainly not enough people working on
> Macs in the community to be currently able to organise that.
> Additionally, it could lead to a "hey, if they can have their own, why
> can't I" kind of attitude for the other OSes, which sort of defeats the
> purpose of attempting to make everything uniform in the first place ;

The goal here is to find a common theme for all OS's. If the majority of 
OS's have Clearlooks in common, then this is where we should start. We 
should gradually move to the production of our own in-house "LibreOffice 
Theme" where all OS's are represented. As you say, there are "not enough 
people working on Macs in the community to be currently able to organise 
that". So, when there are enough people available to organise the mac 
"LibreOffice Clearlooks" theme, then, this would be one of the tasks to 
be taken on by the Mac community. In the meantime, let's start with a 
common majority theme where we establish criteria/policy/protocol and 
then we can focus on the Mac people.

> - do we produce stuff based on a theme that is only available to
> Linux/Windows users, and the Mac people will just have to make do ? It
> is one way of looking at things, but will alienate even further Mac
> users with regard to the community, even more so than they probably feel
> at the moment;

The only reason Mac people may feel alienated is due to their small 
numbers. As you know, when addressing problems for LibreOffice, if we 
can resolve problems, we will do so without playing favourite to any OS 
platform. Once the numbers of contributing Mac members is up, we can 
then, hopefully, engage them more in the project and take a closer look 
at theming the LibreOffice Clearlooks theme on the Mac platform. I think 
this is a reasonable thing to do.

> - we drop the uniformisation process completely and let everyone do
> their own thing (aside from any legal issues with regard to using UI
> elements from MS).
>
> Currently Mac comes with two themes : Blue, or Graphite (similar to
> BrushedMetal on Linux).
>
> I had a quick search for the possibility to apply different themes to
> Mac, there are/were 2 different programs :
>
> Unsanity Shapeshifter : limited to versions of Mac OSX prior to Leopard
> (i.e.<  OS 10.5)
>
> Magnifique : (OSX>  10.5) which appears to have closed down operations,
> the domain name is up for sale.
>
> So there does not appear to be any easy way to satisfy the Mac side of
> the equation that we are looking to resolve.
>
>
> Alex

On the contrary, there is a way to satisfy the Mac side. This is to get 
a Mac user who is interested in theming the Clearlooks theme to the Mac 
platform. I am sure there are groups that will help with this on the Mac 
forums. Again, with a user base as large as we have, the Mac platform 
and interested Mac members, either on our system or on another Mac 
connected group, would be able to help out. For example, I went on the 
KDE forums looking for help, and although I did not specifically ask for 
hands-on help from that particular group, I did get an answer. If the 
theming becomes a real challenge here, and, we are not able to get the 
LibreOffice Clearlooks theme properly organised, there is nothing to 
stop us (me) from asking the KDE (or Gnome) theme members for help and 
even asking for a volunteer to help us complete the theming process.

Let's agree on a screenshots theme protocol, establish directions on how 
to apply the parts and let's see in the end if we could complete the 
theming process in order to supply it to the kde-looks.org and 
gnome-looks.org sites (this is where the theme repositories are found). 
In the case of the Mac, I don't know where we would go for help, I tried 
to look around but, honestly, I did not find the Mac platform too 
supportive of opensource programmes and there is little of FLOSS themes 
available. But, as in all cases today, there must be, somewhere a group 
interested in FLOSS themes and we could ask this group for help in this 
instance.

Cheers

Marc

--
Marc Paré
http://www.parEntreprise.com


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