Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Poll about linux music audio app usability
From: David Olofson (david_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Thu Jun 20 2002 - 00:28:14 EEST
On Wednesday 12 June 2002 11.20, Vincent Touquet wrote:
> Continuing in the thinking out loud department,
> so I don't have to study ;):
>
> Seems a waste to hardcode all the GUI stuff though.
>
> How do they get about theming their controls
> in Xmms / mplayer ... ?
>
> Slider bars get different sizes and sometimes
> shapes in such programs, yet they
> retain their basic functionality.
>
> Guess we should try to do something similar,
> instead of hardcoding the actual appearance
> of a knob / slider.
That's a nice idea, but I'm afraid it leads right into that dreaded
complexity/flexibility trap. Either you make an advanced and great
looking GUI with custom graphics, or you use a themable "standard
GUI", such as GTK+ or Qt. (Of course, you can use the latter to
implement the former, but then you end up with a GUI that doesn't
care about standard themes anyway.)
That said, the XMMS/WinAmp model *is* in fact of the first kind I
mention above; GUIs with custom graphics. A skin for such an
application is basically just a set of images that replace the
original custom graphics.
It's like replacing the graphics of a game; drawing a bunch of images
for each object, whereas normal ("GTK+ style" themes consist of
generic textures and images used by all widgets.
//David
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
`---------------------------> http://www.linuxdj.com/maia/ -'
.- David Olofson -------------------------------------------.
| Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |
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