Mart

When a new KDM Theme?



For Air, GREAT WORK!



giuseppe p.

I think the "circles background" idea is good, but I think they should blend in more. I think there is nothing wrong if they are hardly visible at all. I would like to see the look of them with minimal contrast.

I know Giuseppe's post might have come across as a bit troll-ish/rude, however I went through his suggestions and they are pretty spot on. It'd be nice if some/all of those would be able to be fixed by release.



Even with the minor imperfections, I love the new theme. Great work.

It only looks good really if you have desktop effects enabled, otherwise it is much worse than Oxygen.

Please consider keeping alive, and as default, a theme for us, who do not like to waste CPU/RAM with desktop effects, please?

nah, maybe they have a font by default you like more (ubuntu uses dejavu iirc), but if a gtk app and a qt one are set to the same font and same dpi the result is identical, i.e. you can superimpose one to the other in gimp, with substract composition and the result is exactly black

I'm glad to hear that's the best font you can do, as it tells me that the ugly font problem in KDE 4 isn't in KDE's fault. But there is definitely a problem there, and it must be in Qt4 then, because GNOME has quite beautiful fonts by comparison.



As for the theme in general... it's quite nice; good to see something for KDE 4 that isn't black.

no, that screenshot is not scaled,

and that font is more or less the best we can do under linux, far from perfect, bus as good as it can get, avoiding to put any screenshot just because omg can't be done in a perfect way, i hope that some day we will get font rendering comparable to other platforms but until that day...

Dear Nuno,

I did not look at a scaled version (at least I hope the one notmart posted ISN'T a scaled version :-)).



That font (or maybe the rasterizer, or maybe both!) has IMHO some kerning/hinting problems when it comes to very small sizes. For instance, the "il" and "li" couples are too spaced (see Details, or Split). I know that that's not a KDE problem, rather a more general one.



I was ranting about it: it's just another issue to solve, because it's good to have small fonts in toolbars, tooltips etc., but those fonts must be rendered properly.



In the meanwhile, I would avoid doing demonstrative screenshots about themes / look&feel and so on with those glitches; that's why I was suggesting a KDE "policy" on screenshots, in which specify which theme one must use, which fonts, which screen resolution and so on. But that's absolutely IMHO and a bit offtopic (is there a proper ML or irc channel to talk about this?)



> I do agre on many of you coments, but as they say rome was not build in a day..



That's fine, and I do really appreciate your work! Consider my post something like a "bug report" :-)

Just one question did you look at the fonts in dolphin on a scaled version of that screenshot??? Its liberation sans full hinting on and no rgb subhinting.

Liberation sans comes from IMO the best fonts team in the world, they dont get the kerning wrong.



I do agre on many of you coments, but as they say rome was not build in a day..

> I don't see the problems Giuseppe is reporting here: The font is ok and



The font is NOT ok, and if you say so you should document about proper subpixel kerning.



> all the "is not centered vertically" are at most a matter of taste.



It's what we are talking about: theming. Taste. You can like the general feel, but mine are objective considerations: those UI elements NOT centered, spaced or whatever.



> IMO these 15 points are more trollish than helpful.

Please argue properly: I brought precise, accurate and sharp observations, and getting rid of them with "they're trollish" does not help.

I like this new Air theme, so +1.



I don't see the problems Giuseppe is reporting here: The font is ok and all the "is not centered vertically" are at most a matter of taste. IMO these 15 points are more trollish than helpful.



My 2c

General comments:

0) It's Windows Vista. Period. The "common brand" is Windows Vista.



1) Please, please, please don't do screenshots when using fonts that freetype doesn't render properly (due to the fonts themselves, or the lack of the hinter bytecode interpreter, small font sizes, monitor resolution). You can see it very easily in the screenshot, look at the Dolphin's toolbar: "Icons" "Columns" "Split" have *wrong* kernings.



I saw this in MANY OTHER screenshots. KDE needs a "screenshots policy": when someone needs to do a screenshot for showing graphic/aesthetic details, he/she must set the very same font, the very same screen resolution and so on. The user is still able to change the font if he wants, but it doesn't make sense to use poorly rendered fonts to show the beautiness of a design!



2) Why so many unconsistencies? There are a lot of different typefaces even between "similar" things (plasmoids, windows...) and I don't see why.



/** **/

And now, something that DOESN'T work:



http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/981/airh.png



see reference picture for numbering details.



These are graphic / conceptual errors which I think must be fixed or at least discussed.



1) "Desktop Folder" is not centered vertically in what seems to be a "plasmoid titlebar"



2) The application icon is not centered vertically



3) Too little margin on top of the icons



4) strings that aren't already fixed...? "isPartOf"?



5) The lower window border is thickier than the left/right one



6) Not vertically centered



7) THY UGLIEST FONT! Why is that???



8) Lots of space wasted here; the "reflection" is broken (it should be much more blurred and go UNDER the items in order to avoid to waste space)



9) What's that? Why there is no title?



10) Why notification "titlebars" are different from plasmoid titlebars that are in turn different from windows titlebars? CONSISTENCY!



11) The text in the box in the taskbar is not centered vertically



12) The "box" itself (the entry) is not centered vertically in the panel



13) The clock has different left/right margins



14) The search lineedit is 1 pixel too short on top



15) Why the "expand" arrow is so distant from the last icon in the systray? Why that wasted space there?



My 2c.

@rzzvfi: +1

maybe we should learn from windows 7 as to how it blends aero/glass with its widgets?

Air is nice, but some people are still waiting for polyester port to kde4. And tastymenu. Two of three things that still keep me on kde3 (the last one is kirocker).



PS your CMS is hardly broken :)

I like it, looking forward to try it out.



I think rzzvli has a point, an unified look would be interesting, but on the other side of the moon, might confuse users because some 'windows' act differently then the others. So having a windows above the plasmoids would sort of blend them in together and making things harder and confusing.

agreed. the AIR plasma-theme looks really cool, but the oxygen window-theme on dolphin looks kinda wrong. Is there another surprise planed for 4.3? ^^

when a new KDE Theme?



Great Work!



giuseppe

Looking at the screenshot Dolphin somehow seems kinda, well out of place? Sadly we can't use plasma themes for standard qt/kde widgets or can we? THAT would look really awesome.

In my opinion these circles are irritating/distracting the user.

I generelly like the idea, but they could be less intrusive.



Anyway I like air more than oxygen. ;)

And I like your always very interesting posts. :)

Yeah! It's amazing. I saw the new kdm theme, and it's amazing, too. I done a splash screen, now it's in Nuno's hands... waiting for final version :D