[ubuntu-art] Manju and the CSS engine

[Thorsten Wilms]

Hi!

Here's some info about 2 interesting theming projects:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Robert Staudinger <robert.staudinger at gmail.com>
> To: Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel at free.fr>
> Cc: gtk-devel-list at gnome.org
> Subject: Re: Gtk3 and theming - a proposal (with code)
> Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 16:33:22 +0200
> 
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel at free.fr> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > there's another project called [1]Manju (also with code [2]available),
> > which seems to use SVG instead of CSS. Could you comment on the
> > differences between these approaches, if you know them ?
> 
> Quoting from [1]:
> 
> <<The Manju project aims at creating graphical widget toolkit themes
> from SVG files in a toolkit independent fashion. It combines the idea
> of a pixmap theme engine, Jimmac's "One Canvas Workflow", SVG markup
> features and Inkscape export functionality to fully automate the
> creation of a scalable and stretchable pixmap theme from an SVG
> source.>>
> 
> AFAIK Manju is generating a binary theme package [2, 3], from a single
> SVG file. There is a naming spec for svg elements in place [4], so the
> package generation tool can create PNGs from the theme components.
> 
> The CSS engine was born out of desire for a more powerful non-code
> theming approach. There is a small enhancement patch against librsvg
> in the works, once that's in it's just as well possible to design
> themes in a single SVG canvas. Manju is exporting theme parts at
> specific sizes to avoid ugly scaling effects, this is not needed in
> the CSS engine because it relies on CSS-defined borders and will
> support border-images [5] in the future.
> 
> Unlike manju, "GCE" (the gtk-css-engine) did initially focus on
> delivering a gtk-oriented solution, but work is now underway to add
> support for clutter and clutter's "Tidy" toolkit to the spun-off
> "libccss" [6].
> 
> To the best of my knowledge it is not yet possible to use a manu-based
> theme, there is no engine yet. On the other hand it is very well
> possible to test CSS engine themes in "TheWidgetFactory" [7], the
> upcoming release will be usable desktop wide.
> 
> It would probably be possible to use manju-created themes with GCE,
> either by changing manju's theme creation process, or by changing the
> way how themes are loaded in GCE, but I do currently not see any
> advantage in using a binary theme package. On the contrary, the
> "CSS-with-single-pixmaps/SVGs" approach lends itself very well to
> rapid protoyping.
> 
> [1] http://labs.imendio.com/?p=21
> [2] http://groups.google.com/group/manju-project/browse_thread/thread/2a93dbe94e40e1ec
> [3] http://pages.testbit.eu/manju/package-spec.html
> [4] http://pages.testbit.eu/manju/theme-spec.html
> [5] http://ejohn.org/blog/border-image-in-firefox
> [6] http://lists.o-hand.com/clutter/1904.html
> [7] http://www.stellingwerff.com/?page_id=10
> 
> - Rob
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> 
-- 
Thorsten Wilms

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