[openbox] aesthetics

[David Barr]

On 15 Jul 2005, at 11:27, John Russell wrote:

>>
>> - softens the bevel on raised windows, this is basically so it looks
>> less harsh and fits in ore with my GNOME environment, mikael says he
>> cannot see the differennce, i think it would be of most interest to
>> GNOME users, because of the softness. the point of this is if you 
>> don't
>> use GNOME the difference in probably not even that noticable or
>> important to you, if you do i think it helps uniform your desktop. (it
>> ain't perfect but it's a start?)
>>
>
> You must have very sensitive eyes. The after seems a little darker but
> its hard to see a  huge difference.

perhaps i do! i don't know? i'll tell you this story; i was using 
metacity, and i could not fathom why metacity themes seemed to be just 
a little bit sweeter than openbox themes. then i realised that when a 
window border  was 'raised' in metacity the border (bevel whatever) was 
very faint, almost not there, but if you remove it it looks quite 
different, so even if you choose soft colours for openbox any bevel 
would stick out like a saw thumb, it would seem really gordy. the 
reason it looks darker is because it does not have a horrid bright blue 
bevel around it :) as i said this is nitpicking of the most extreme 
case...

>>
>> - alpha the icon ever so slightly to sofen any unfortunate edges...
>>
>
> This does look better.  Its subtle but the icon edges can be pretty 
> harsh.
>
this was kind of an error it is a neat little hck mikael gave me, but i 
forgot it was there when i made the patch, it does however alter all 
the icons menus, alt-tab etc :)

>> - uses larger font on default theme.
>
> I thought that most themes used fonts that were too small but the new
> pango font thingy seems to have helped that a lot.
>

i am sure pango fonts will rule us all, they are still a bit kooky for 
me, but i know mika is on it ;)

>>
>> here is a screenshot here of some of it (bevel handle) left is openbox
>> as god intended and right is my abomination:
>>
>
> Your house must be incredibly neat.

it is a mess, a messy mess.

> Thanks for the work and sharing.
>
as i said mika did most of it

> It would be cool if it made it into the next release.

the grips also annoy me, because it is so hard for them to look 'just 
right' i hardcoded mine to 22 i think, windowmaker grip and handle is 
hardcoded, i think this is a sweet little usability thing too?
my computer just 'sploded, so i cannot tinker no more (hugs ibook) :(
i did however upload a more complete 'fix' to teh bevel here ( 
http;//david.chalkskeletons.com/files ) as i did a bad.

much bigger shout out to mikael though for re-adding the remove disable 
button feature.

i would really like the next openbox release to be the bees knees, not 
only because it functions right because it looks pretty sweet too, even 
with it's limited themeing. i know mikael will make us all proud! (no 
pressure...)


> John

David