Gnome Theme Editor, High Contrast Critique
Hi,
I took a real quick look at Gnome theming recently and it would seem it is a
lot more difficult than I initially thought. It's partially explained by the
complexity and power offered but it is still a lot harder than it should be
in my opinion. Even the high contrast theme file looks pretty heavy and more
than a bit cryptic to me. Umm, not to mention the format looks more like C
plus plus than XML. Don't get me wrong, though, I won't be giving up any
time soon, but I'm not too happy so far.
My question is, is there a theme editor for Gnome? Windows has one, and
though nothing pretty or advanced, it more or less works apart from a few
slight niggles (menu colors are derived from dialog by default, and left end
of inactive title changes based on dialog color). KDE has also got a theme
editor, and it seems to be pretty usable, too.
It would help immensly if there was something that would let me specify all
the colors and sizes graphically (percentages for sizes and 24-bit decimal
triplets for RGB). Coupled with a real time graphical preview of how the end
result looked, it would save a lot of time and nerves in the long run. Maybe
this is just Linux culture, but somehow it seems ironic to me that you
cannot use the GUI to customize the GUI. Perhaps it's just me but I find the
GUI can be loads easier for things like this.
On a side note, I'm not too happy with the high contrast themes on offer.
The basic problem to me is that they are too high contrast, so it can be
straining to read the dialog or window text. And as I had anticipated, the
contrast between fielld, dialog and button background is minimal. If I ever
get any theme file done, that's the first thing I'll change in there. One of
my big goals is to make the different kinds of widgets including buttons,
fields and titles stand out well against the dialog background. Not to
mention hover effects should be as clear as possible, too, an RGB invert
could be nice.
Maybe this default high contrast theme works well for some people, though. I
bet most magnification users would find my ideal theme pretty strange and
difficult, too. THat's the point with Linux, everything you dislike can be
customized. I do have a Windows accessibility page, and if I get a proper
GTK2 theme done some day, I'll add it on a special Linux access page then.
Maybe I could even distribute it on some theme site, who knows.
PS: I'll get some sleep. It is or rather was about 1 30 AM here.
PPS: Appologies for a possibly whining, mini-rant:ish tone <smiley>.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@mail.student.oulu.fi)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and more:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila
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