Giuliano,
I fully agree with you and couldn't say it better myself. This is our
company's feeling about commercial software as well. The same thing
could be said for my previous two companies I worked for. The clients
dictates what they like and we must supply - after all, they paid for
the software. We always implement two or three different GUI styles
in a prototype. Show it to the client and 100% of the time they choose
the one that isn't based on standard Windows style guides (all my
previous projects were Windows only - the latest one isn't). Simple
things like alternate colors in grid rows to button style tabsheets,
etc..
The OS theme should be used as a default to the LCL, but the developer
must ultimately be able to override those defaults via properties or
sub-classing components. And those changes must be able at design time
and runtime.
Regards,
- Graeme -
On 4/17/07, Giuliano Colla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In this case the developer has the option to use an application specific
appname.gtkrc file to override the standard theme and use his own.
This is hardly a solution.
What real people in real world needs is to give the right appearence to
widgets, in order to create user friendly applications. This means
dynamically changing colors, image backgrounds, and whatever is needed to
convey the right information in the most intuitive way. For the same
reasons, buttons and other widgets are often of different size and shape,
and widget style and theme goe to hell.
A default theme is a goot thing for beginners, just to provide them a
consistent starting point, but as they proceed and learn, they override the
theme more and more frequenly, until nothing is left.
The sacred cow of Widget Style can be reasonable for default values, but
nothing more.
Besides my company needs, which doesn't give a damn about themes and widget
style, of all the commercial Delphi application I've seen, and I've seen
quite a lot, there's none which sticked to any known widget style, but all
of them were using colors, shapes and bitmaps consistent with company style,
and application needs, which was neither Qt, nor Windows, nor, God forbid,
Gtk.
Just my penny of wisdom, late in the night.
Giuliano
_________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
"unsubscribe" as the Subject
archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
