Hi all, For a long time, It's quite annoying that gtk+ applications always look like alien under KDE, and vice versa. The gtk+-qt theme engine "partially" solve this, but this is not enough. Configurations like double-click time, colors, and fonts can be make cross-desktop through XSETTINGS spec. Besides, preferred applications are solved with xdg-utils by Portland project. So the behavior of applications developed with different toolkits for different desktop environments will be similiar in the future. However, the theming problem cannot be solved via current available approach. To get consistent look and feel, here is a proposal.
The architecture of gtk+ theme and qt theme are quite different, and both are complicated. Writing theme engines supporting both are quite difficult. Currently qtcurve does this well, but there are still some problems. Drawing gtk+ widgets with Qt is already possilble, but this is a dirty hack. Some themes don't work properly this way, either. So a common theming API encapsulating the toolkit specific details is required. We already have a nice croass-toolkit/cross-platform drawing API - Cairo. So, why not create a new set of theming API based on Cairo? The authors of theme only need to focus on the art and design, not the underlying details. All drawing should be done through cairo API, and then no toolkit-specific drawing API is required. In this way, developing a cross-toolkit theming engine is possible. What do you think? _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
