Re: Look and Feel

[Jesse Ross]

> One of them should be the
> standard NeXT theme, but I don't think it would have to be the default
> -- if they're equally well-designed, why is there a need for a default
> at all?

The default is whatever we decide to ship on things like the LiveCD or any
of the desktop initiatives, as a replacement for the NeXT look -- but I
guess that would ultiimately be up to the maintainer of that specific
project, so having multiple themes installed and letting users pick would
be okay.

>
> There is, however, one thing I'd like to add. Please remember that NeXT
> application development is based on the WYSIWYG paradigma, and some
> applications (like, to pick one at random, AddressManager) make rather
> heavy use of the contract that the look at run time is going to be
> precisely the same, or at least very close to, the look at design time.
> (And even if this were a bad design principle, which it isn't, the
> OpenStep APIs don't provide many tools to do it differently.) So theme
> design must be done very carefully indeed.

Yeah -- after Nicolas and I get the theme built, I'll be doing a lot of
testing with GORM to ensure things look right in both places.


> PS Have you written some text about what one actually sees in the
> mock-up? If so, I must have missed it. I'm not sure I understand what
> the different areas in the "dock" at the right are. Care to explain?
> :-)

I haven't written anything yet, but for a quick run down, in order:

 - App holder docklet
 - Minimized window holder docklet
 - Buffer docklet (holds snippets of text, images, URL shortcuts, pretty
much anything that could be held on the Pasteboard, or made into an
alias.
 - blank space for extra docklets
 - Calendar docklet
 - Clock docklet

The dock idea I proposed in the picture is made up of a bunch of different
docklets, similar to what GNUstep has now, but they can visually "merge"
to look something like a taskbar. Things can be pulled off, resized,
rearranged, and multiple docks can be created, just like in GNUstep
currently. Multiple instances of the same docklet could exist (so you
could have, for example, two App holder docklets, one on the top and one
on the bottom of your window). The proposed idea didn't really go over
well though (and, to be honest, I'm not totally sold on it myself -- there
are a bunch of usability problems with it :), so I'm going to be doing a
new mockup in the next few days, and when that's posted, I'll give a full
description of all interface elements.


J.