Subject: Letter from fvwm.themes.org.

From: Alex Wallis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 00:03:05 +1030

With apologies for those on both lists.....
http://fvwm.themes.org progress report 25th Feb 2001
Project Leader - Alex Wallis <[email-masked]>

Progress is slow at this stage as VA Linux are still waiting on the
finalisation of their upgrading. Certain key personel are either
unavailable or too busy to speed up the process. However all should be
operational by April.

In the meantime the temporary site will have to do, but can still be
easily modified before then.

The new site will look much the same as the other window managers, but
we all want it to look better than the others don't we?!  ;)
So if anybody wishes to contribute please feel free to email me asap!
Graphics skills especially are in short supply.

At recent themes.org meetings on irc.linux.com #themes.org it has been
suggested to post interviews with the fvwm developers. I would like to
begin with an interview with either Mikhael or Olivier (or both),
explaining the history and philosophy behind fvwm-themes and the
directions they hope it will take. The interview can be by pre-arranged
irc session or via email. (Olivier, I have an ircbot that speaks very
bad francaise ;-P )
Other readers however may be more interested in something or someone
else, so I ask for suggestions and or volunteers. I for one would like
to learn more about Sir Boris II's feline ancestry.
Subject to approval from those concerned, if anyone has a question or
two they would like to ask, please submit them to me so they can be
included. The eventual series of interviews(?) will be posted as
themes.org special feature articles perhaps even before the new site is
operational. Details to come later.

I also would like to include material from other themes projects than
just fvwm-themes alone. I feel this is necessary/advisable because of
the larger numbers of fvwm users than the much smaller number of
fvwm-themes users. However some polls might be required to more
accurately reflect the percentages of either category. Contributions,
comments and/or suggestions on this approach also appreciated.

Other material required for the fvwm.themes.org site are some new themes
and screenshots. Please feel free to mail your favourite new theme or
screenshot to [email-masked], however all such submissions are subject
to approval of course.

At this point I would like to comment on a previous correspondance.....

On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 05:23:48 -0600  Mikhael Goikhman wrote:

>Probably in both, by a different names. Alternatively, we may simply add a
>wm-icons requirement for fvwm-themes, this really would add themability,
>but I don't know how users will like this. There are already 2 packages
>to install (fvwm and fvwm-themes), and wm-icons is currently optional.

IMHO
The whole concept of desktop theming implies the user is willing to
download as many packages as required to achieve the appearance and
versatility that brings the desired result. In comparison to installing
elightenment on a stock standard unix system, fvwm-themes is a breeze
and far less dependent on other packages.
KDE even takes this comparison much further in their suite of apps. I do
not think requiring wm-icons is excessive and may actually help in
developing that project also. Eventually it is conceivable that a great
many individual themes for fvwm will become available, so having to
download "extras" should be seen as no big deal. (Comments anyone?)

Which brings me to my next point....
I applaud Mikhael and Olivier on the sophistication of the theme engine
and the very high standard quality work they do. However all their
efforts and hard work are in vain if people simply choose not to use
fvwm-themes.
Currently, the development of fvwm-themes progresses swiftly, through
the customary tools like cvs, so occasional package releases with latest
bugfixes and new features are mandatory just like they are for fvwm.
Such releases should also be announced on freshmeat as that is what
freshmeat's intended purpose is! If people see an active development
project frequently on the newletter list they can have more confidence
in getting support when using that software. So regular incremental
announcements on freshmeat will only increase and enhance the interest
of users as new features are added and announced.

However, many fvwm users will tell you they use fvwm because it's
simple, yet powerful. It has built-in sensible defaults so that minimal
configuration is required. I would estimate a large percentage of fvwm
users have .fvwm2rc configuration files of less than 100 lines. And it
is the fear of complexity that prevents many from even taking
fvwm-themes for a test drive.

At present fvwm-themes as a package contains only 12 themes with the
flexibility to provide hundreds of possible combinations. But I as
project leader of fvwm.themes.org have to devise a way of not only
publicising fvwm-themes as a viable transportable theme package for
fvwm, but also to stimulate the interest of users who would otherwise
choose to avoid such a lavish extravagance of precious computer
resources.

On the other hand, it is also hoped that eventually a great many new
themes can be added or uninstalled at will, so that users can choose
what they like. But the level of complexity within each theme's
configuration files allow for an enormous amount of variation of
components within the theme design. It can be easily demonstrated a
simple syntax error in just one branch of the package can waste a lot of
valuable time. Just designing or even copying any given theme can be a
daunting task for many users. It therefore is simply not viable for a
very small team of core developers to maintain anything else but a small
group of original designs. New themes must therefore be added by users
themselves, and most likely would only contain the most elementary
components like background or sound effects. This most likely is
detrimental to stimulating fvwm-themes popularity as a viable
alternative configuration tool of choice.

I suggest that fvwm-themes could evolve into something much more than a
simple theme engine. It could become a core project of a great many
complete desktop designs all available by cvs or package release. New
branches to the cvs tree can be added for new themes. Each theme
designer can thus become responsible for his branch of the tree with of
course generous assistance from other mailing list members. Thus more
and more themes can not only be added to the project, but also allowed
to evolve and grow and to take advantage of new features within fvwm
itself as they become implemented.

What is necessary for this to happen? Well first of all a way to
separate the themes from the main engine. As previously stated the core
developer's simply cannot be expected to maintain support for every
theme designed by home users. A possible solution to this is by using 2
cvs sources trees. One for the core developer's themselves currently
housed at sourceforge.net, and another for users to experiment with
their own theme designs. The second tree can contain the core and be
regularly updated, but also extra themes that users themselves create as
separate branches of the themes repository.

VA Linux which hosts both themes.org and sourceforge.net allocates
resources for cvs repositories of certain projects, and I believe that
this idea would be acceptable within the site guidelines. Which brings
me to another suggestion at a [email-masked] meeting of meta-themes,
which simply put is the co-ordination of all desktop elements like gnome
and gtk themes and xmms skins etc... with the window manager theme
design, as the corresponding resources to integrate all these elements
would be housed in one site with access for theme creators to assistance
from other application designers.

To assist the user in updating their fvwm-themes code as changes and
bugfixes are announced, a simple perl script could be constructed to
access key parameters via input or file. The script could then use those
parameters to update the local cvs source tree from the themes.org
fvwm-themes cvs repository, and recompile and install if necessary,
requiring only a message window to notify the user to restart the window
manager when convenient. This perl script could be highly modifiable and
allow updating of certain theme branches as specified or all. In this
manner much of the fear of working with cutting edge software
technologies can be greatly alleviated. A simple menu click or button
push may be all that is required to run or work with the most current
versions of fvwm and fvwm-themes with the additional benefit of only
installing/upgrading the themes or metathemes that one is interested in.

The widest possible methods of installation are then readily available,
and the whole user end installation is easy to maintain and upgrade.
The difficulties that I see, are mostly in the cvs management but of
course the entire conceptual designs for the project, at this stage, are
merely the above ideas.

I am left wondering how many readers would be willing to participate in
such a project?

Alex Wallis

Project Leader - http://fvwm.themes.org
email: [email-masked]
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