Subject: FVWM: Re: Fvwm Themes

From: Fabien VILLARD <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Nov 1999 17:07:18 +0100

>I don't think M4 is as commonly in use as Fabien obviously does. Any themes
>that rely solely on M4 preprocessing would surely have to include more
>explanation for the "default user" who probably has never heard of M4. But M4
>versions of a theme could be an extra perhaps. 
	Which brings me back to my first question : what is exactly
a "theme" ? :-)
	Does it include that "default user" must be able to create easely his own,
or just choose beetwen existing ones ?

	Fab.

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From: "Steffl, Erik" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 15:43:53 -0600

one thing that I didn't see mentioned is that the themes should be easy to
customize. for example I like new graphical looks but I am not that eager to
change my menus and key/mouse bindigs. however, i would still want to be
able to try out the theme's own menus/keybindings (so that I can improve my
own ones).

  to make this work we need some sort of canonical template for config files
that are flexible enough yet easy to navigate/browse/understand/change. I
sort of like the way the fvwm.themes.org had it organized (well, except the
fvwm dir should be .fvwm as was suggested here before etc.), in a general
way.

  each theme should probably have it's own directory within .fvwm directory,
so that one can switch from theme to theme, add and remove themes easily.
each directory would have same structure.

  each theme has one main config file that read other files, this main file
would be the same for each theme and would look something like this:

Read .theme-name-startup
Read .theme-name-modules
Read .theme-name-theme
Read .theme-name-menu
Read .theme-name-key
Read .theme-name-mouse

  (paraphrazed from the theme from fvwm.themes.org).

  that way you could easily change the key binds and leave the rest alone,
or have common startup file (that sets up path to icons and modules) etc.

  I can imagine that it would be fairly easy to write a tool that would
enable one to change/combine themes.

  this is, of course, very sketchy and rough, it reflects my experience with
configuring the fvwm2.

  the files itself should have some kind of organized layout, so that I
would know where to go to change general styles, where to go to change focus
policies etc. I am not saying that every theme should have to have the very
same layout, but it would have a lot to have a template you can use so you
don't have to reinvent the overall structure. the themes then would work
much better together and it would be easier to create themes, you'd
concentrate on theme, not on the layout of the files.

	erik

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of
> Alex Wallis
> <quote>
> >What I suggest is that all of us somehow get together that talk about
> >our ideas on this matter so we don't end up with a whole bunch of
> >conflicting ideas and setups.  Then we can get fvwm.themes.org up and
> >running again with some new cool fvwm2 themes.
> </unquote>
> 
> Now that's a _very_ good suggestion.
> As a starting point for discussion, let's define a "theme".
> It's already been proposed that menu items should not be 
> changed or affected, but surely MenuStyle's are fair game.