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The Style And Window Decoration System...

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bhrich902

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  • "bhrich902" started this thread

Posts: 1

Location: earth...

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Sunday, November 5th 2006, 1:01am

The Style And Window Decoration System...

Im a KDE user since i started using GNU/Linux for the first time. I sometimes switch or try using distros with Gnome mostly for curiosity and comparison, which is why im writing this, my first post here, comment. I find the way styles and window decorations are applied under KDE to be discouraging for new and average users who like to customize their desktops to their liking, not to mention making use of the wide variety in choices that kde-look.org offers. To get to the point, a user has to download the package and then have to configure, make and compile. That right there is a turn off, and reason enough to make a user switch to, say, Gnome. The reason being that once in gnome-look.org, all a user needs to do for either a style or window decoration is just download the package and either drag it to the theme dialog or click on the install button whithin that dialog. Granted this aspect maybe not a big deal to some, including myself in some way since i'm more than comfortable with the command line, but when i put myself in a new user's mentality having to open a terminal means admitting defeat for the user interaface way of things.

And yes, i am aware of styles and window decorations that provide precompiled packages for different distros, but, even whithing diferent versions of the same distro, those packages are not always going to be compatible. I'm also aware of distributions that package a lot of these styles and window decorations, but they can only package so much. And as for the dekorator project, is a good alternative to applying window decorations, and though is better than nothing, they can only simulate so many.

I guess the short version of this comment would be why, would or shouldn't styles and window decorations in KDE be as easy to apply as the way is done in Gnome?. I can just imagine how much more use that style and window decoration section of kde-look.org would get, not to mention how much more user friendly that would make KDE in general, considering how much it is right now.

jucato

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Monday, November 6th 2006, 1:27am

What you are dragging and dropping in GNOME themes are not widget styles. They are just color schemes and configuration files that modify an already installed widget style, which would either be Clearlooks or GTK. Clearlooks is a widget style, that's why it must be compiled and installed first before you can use it, just like every other widget style in KDE. So basically you are not installing a widget style in GNOME when you drag and drop, but just modifying its appearance/color. In KDE, this would be like configuring the Style and the Color schemes. There are highly customizable widget styles in KDE. I found out that the QtCurve style allows you to import and save different QtCurve "themes". You might be interested in that.

As to why widget styles must be compiled? Widgets are like mini programs that need to be accessed quickly and repeatedly. If they were pixmap-based (the appearance of each and every widget would be determined by small images), there would be a cost in performance. Even without pixmaps, you might notice that some styles perform slower than others (Plastik being one of the fastest). It might (just might) be possible to be able to have a compromise (a themeable widget style using pixmaps or scripts without reducing performance) in the future. But such a technology is not available yet. At least not in KDE 3.x

The situation with window decorations is slightly similar. In GNOME, the window decoration themes you drag and drop are pixmap themes or settings for Metacity, the window manager/window decoration engine only. In KDE, the stuff that you compile are not themes, but rather window decoration engines themselves, which you can customize. So basically, in GNOME, unless you compile things also, your stuck with just the Metacity window decoration engine. There are two KDE window decoration engines that behave similarly to Metacity, meaning you can theme them easily using pixmaps. They are IceWM, which KDE has shipped with for quite a time now, and deKorator, probably the more famous. You can find deKorator and deKorator themes in KDE-Look, while you can refer to your distro on how to get IceWM.

Hope that helps a bit.
OS: Kubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) | KDE 3.5.3
Computer Specs: AMD Sempron 2200 1.5Ghz | VIA KM266 Pro 8235 chipset | nVidia GeForce MX 4000 128MB DDR-RAM 32-bit AGP 8x