2012/7/10 Paul Tagliamonte
<paultag@debian.org>
If there are followups on debian-qt-kde, if you wouldn't mind CCing me,
that'd be great. I'm not on that list.
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 05:16:57PM +0200, Eshat Cakar wrote:
> Hi Ronoaldo,
>
> 2012/7/10 Ronoaldo José de Lana Pereira <
ronoaldo@gmail.com>:
> > I'm working on theme packages for the Debian Desktop, and came with a few
> > problems overriding the default KDE wallpaper. I noticed that
> > kde-wallpaper-default comes with a symlink in
> > /usr/share/wallpapers/kde-default, that points to the default wallpaper. It
> > would be very nice to be able to override this default link with a new
> > installed theme.
>
> I don't have much experience with /etc/alternatives, but managing the KDE
> related artwork with symlinks is definitely doable.
>
> > Currently, desktop-base (and probably any other theme package) creates a
> > plasma script to run upon the user's first KDE configuration, and at that
> > point override the default.
>
> It took me a bit of time, to get this working correctly with plasma scripting.
> This was suggested to be the way to go, if you want to modify the users
> workspace.
>
> > This simply don't work very well for some
> > scenarios, like installing a new theme or changing the default theme to
> > another one by the installation of a package. Put in other words: it could
> > be nice to be able to change the default KDE wallpaper systemwide.
> > I wold like to discuss with the kde maintainers if there is any way to
> > change this symlink to use the alternatives system, allowing the default
> > theme to be replaced by another package or by user choice if there is more
> > than one alternative, and potentially avoiding the use of plasma-scripts to
> > set the default wallpaper.
>
> The plasma script is part of the desktop-base package. So there is probably no
> change needed for KDE packages. We just have to make sure that
> /usr/share/wallpapers/kde-default (and also kdm and ksplash themes) is reset to
> whatever KDE upstream has as default, when no theme package is installed.
alternatives can take care of this if configured correctly :)
Exactly. The theme packages above (still in alpha testing) are doing some use of other alternatives that maybe desktop-base could provide too. Alternative naming still open :)
>
> Another alternative would be to have a clone of the desktop-base package, using
> the same current methods to set defaults but additionally conflict with
> desktop-base (and other theme packages), so that users can only have one theme
> package installed at a time.
Bleh. OK, this addresses some changes I've been mulling to the
desktop-base package / how we handle themes in general. More on this
topic later, but it's my intent to help fix this situation for wheezy+1.
I was thinking that too. The problem I see if the themes are conflicting, is that multiple themes will not be able to co-exist on a installation. This is why I fell like alternatives to the look-and-feel will work better.
> This definitely is an unclean way, but would avoid changes to the current
> desktop-base package, which could be a problem because of wheezy's freeze.
>
> > If something similar could be done with the default Ksplash theme, that wold
> > be also great.
>
> Well, this is handled by
> /usr/share/desktop-base/profiles/kde-profile/share/config/ksplashrc which could
> also be changed by /etc/alternatives/. Same is true for the KDM Theme.
>
> Since KDE packages are not involved here, we could move this discussion to the
> debian-desktop ML or to IRC, where you can find me and Paul in #debian-desktop.
o/ (come hang out!)
I'll get into IRC as soon as I can, so we can discuss that, absolutely!
> I'd want at least Paul (CC'ed) to confirm /etc/alternatives is the way
> to go to manage
> multiple themes.
Right now, yeah, that's pretty much the best we've got.
> What about the other DEs like Gnome and Xfce? Are they already working
> with your theme
> package?
Yep, update-alternatives handles their stuff too. Check it out!
This was from my old VM, which still had all the krufty old packages with Joy
installed with it :)
debian@debian:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config desktop-background
There are 11 choices for the alternative desktop-background (providing /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-background).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-wallpaper_1920x1080.svg 70 auto mode
1 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/debian-blueish-wallpaper.svg 30 manual mode
2 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-inksplat-wallpaper_1920x1080.svg 65 manual mode
3 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-wallpaper_1280x1024.svg 65 manual mode
4 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-wallpaper_1600x1200.svg 65 manual mode
5 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-wallpaper_1920x1080.svg 70 manual mode
6 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/joy-wallpaper_1920x1200.svg 65 manual mode
7 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/moreblue-orbit-wallpaper-widescreen.svg 50 manual mode
8 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/moreblue-orbit-wallpaper.svg 50 manual mode
9 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/nightly-wallpaper.png 40 manual mode
10 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/spacefun-wallpaper-widescreen.svg 55 manual mode
11 /usr/share/images/desktop-base/spacefun-wallpaper.svg 60 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
It's hacky and hard to use, but it totally works :)
Is there any "graphical front-end" to the alternatives system, like the one we have for debconf? Anyway, I guess I can work out on a small tool to allow the user to change the theme based on the installed themes. Just an idea...
> I myself, as co-maintainer, am fine to clean up the
> deskop-base package to work with multiple themes for KDE.
>
> > Thanks for your attention and comments.
>
> And thank you for working on the other theme packages.
Huge +1 to this.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Eshat
Fondly,
Paul
--
.''`. Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>
: :' : Proud Debian Developer
`. `'` 4096R / 8F04 9AD8 2C92 066C 7352 D28A 7B58 5B30 807C 2A87
`- http://people.debian.org/~paultag
Thank you for you support.
I agree, we can do a more in-depth discussion to desktop-base lists. I guess it is more apropriate.