Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:58 pm Post subject: Lots to look forward to
Here's another bit of unashamed eye candy for those with such interests. The other reason I post this is to show that the tidiness and consistency of the icon set [see tear off menus at bottom] is a revelation after the attempts we have been making to achieve that in NeoOffice 1.2.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject:
After looking at that, the big question for me is backgrounds (yes, I'm tinkering with NWF at this point in time so it's meaningful for me...)
Regarding windows and dialogs within OOo there's an open question as to what we should do for backgrounds behind controls in windows and dialogs. Right now they're a light grey background, generally solid. While this looked bad in 10.2, with the prevalance of Metal in 10.3 and later it's much more visually palatable (see the screenshots in genesis of the new weapons). Since it looks OK to me, I've let it slide.
What's the general thought as to doing striped backgrounds vs. flat light grey? Even Apple has severely toned down the striping since 10.3 (see menus, for instance) and even done more of the flat gray in iTunes and Mail. In light of the general UI schitzophrenia Apple apps have, I'm content to leave the backgrounds for the new weapons the way they are.
I really like the muted stripes background of 10.3, hate metal like I hate...well, whatever, and am not too fond of the unified and pseudo-metal things that have crept into the latest apps and recent iApps (like metal, they're very dark and heavy)....
I remember from NWF v0.1 that getting the stripes to tile correctly was a chore, so I could live with a nice flat light grey
If only Apple would get its act together....
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 10:02 pm Post subject:
Well, getting the stripes to line up wasn't really the fault of Apple but more the way OOo deals with drawing widgets. OOo says "draw me a button at x and y" and tends to erase the background first. The problem is that background erasing...it also has embedded coordinates. Aligning the stripes becomes problematic in the sense that there's sometimes no good way to ask Carbon/Cocoa/etc. to do that. DrawThemeBackground() (the Appearance variant) used to be fine to draw the entire window at once, but the moment you started trying to do sub-rectangles it'd freak out.
It's something that's addressable, but problematic. Dan solved it by actually importing the background as a bitmap into OOo itself and dumping the OS routines. The only problem with that approach is that it doesn't adapt to OS level changes (the stripes got much more muted in 10.3, for example).
I guess I won't totally axe the thought of doing it for toolbars and the like but won't kill myself over it either
It's something that's addressable, but problematic. Dan solved it by actually importing the background as a bitmap into OOo itself and dumping the OS routines. The only problem with that approach is that it doesn't adapt to OS level changes (the stripes got much more muted in 10.3, for example).
I would think that one possible way to do this is to intersect the OOo drawing bounds to the current clip and then draw the background over the entire window. Then reset the clip to what it was before. This way, the native background drawing routines will align the strips relative to the origin of the window no matter where you are drawing.
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 10:51 pm Post subject: Well done
You're both doing a great job, ed and patrick. Well done. I think muted is the way to go, with less striping. In any case, the sort of ECECEC etc? NeoOffice uses is sooo much better IMHO than the sort of fawn shading [eg ECE9D8] in Star Office. What were they thinking? Looks like the colour of the old PC boxes! I personally prefer a little more blue-greyish, E4E8EED? - but I'm very happy with the direction you've taken, ed.
Happy Easter: what's left of it: not much here
Peter
Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:20 am Post subject: Re: Well done
aussie149 wrote:
You're both doing a great job, ed and patrick. Well done. I think muted is the way to go, with less striping. In any case, the sort of ECECEC etc? NeoOffice uses is sooo much better IMHO than the sort of fawn shading [eg ECE9D8] in Star Office. What were they thinking? Looks like the colour of the old PC boxes! I personally prefer a little more blue-greyish, E4E8EED? - but I'm very happy with the direction you've taken, ed.
Neo 2.0 Alpha will set the background colors from your System Preferences just like Neo 1.2.x did. Trying to pore over the details of an X11 screen snapshot (the non-Aqua menus and the crappy, non-native font rendering made this obvious to me) is largely a waste of time as Neo 2.0 Alpha will, in some ways, look closer to Neo 1.2.x than it does to OOo X11.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
