Re: Look & feel, future plans

[Stefan Urbanek]

Jeff Teunissen wrote:
> 
> Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> >
> > On Wednesday, May 8, 2002, at 05:01 PM, Bissell, Tim wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > * Themes
> > > Anything which changed pixel dimensions of widgets is a no-no given
> > > the OpenStep approach to GUI layout.  Being able to change colours,
> > > textures and gradients on the buttons etc. is a fairly minor gain
> > > relative to the recoding effort required to implement it (let alone
> > > the gain in API cruft)
> >
> > One little point ... you can already change colors by using user
> > defaults to set alternative system colors.
> 
> Yes, but there's a problem with this if you use Gorm. The same problem exists
> with fonts and font sizes.
> 
> If I set the color defaults, or my font defaults, they are encoded in the
> .gorm file. So not only does my system get my settings, but everyone else
> does, too.
> 
> IB had options for setting font and color information such that the user's
> colors were used instead of the developer's -- Gorm does not yet have this
> capability.
> 

I think the problem here is with encoding of colors and fonts. System
colors are colors from a color list and they should be encoded by
storing the list name and the color name and not current RGB or CMYK
values. Same with fonts, when font was created by +userFontOfSize or
+menuFontOfSize it should be encoded as 'user font' or 'menu font'
respectively and not as its concrete representation (Helvetica Bold
12pt).

And to be able to get 'system fonts', some kind of gnustep extension to
the font panel can be used, like -showSystemFonts:(BOOL)flag. This
should list system font names (like Menu Font, Message Font,...) in
family column. Or there may be abstract font name 'System' in family
column (listed first for easier access) and in type column there should
be list of types (Menu, Message, User,...) And font panel should allow
an user to select a specified size in size the column, wthere will be an
option for selecting default size.

Just how I imagine it,

Stefan