I need an advice, but first some bla bla...
I have lately made some use of svg in gtkdialog. It really gives some new possibilities when it comes look'n feel. My initial studie was to upgrade pmount. Now I have done more vector-graphics for the next Pmusic. It really start looking like something else than windows95...
Ok, so I wanted to fullfill this, and started the work on a unique gtk-theme. - Not only for the bloat, but because Pmusic (with gtkdialog) takes advantage of a clearer gui. ie.
- The <table> headers are not clickable, so I have removed the hightlightning.
- A splash-box without jwm-border, needs a different background color than its parent.
- Important text can be larger (another color) than ie the statusbar.
- Widgets belonging together (search-field and sourcelist) can be unified by outfit.
- ...
I don't see this purely as bloat (we are talking about 10kb with SVGs and gtk-theme), but as a way to make the gui more intuitive for the user. But it arise a fundamental question?
One of the main goals for Puppy 4 was to use gtk2 - only. This would give an unified look of all programs in Puppy, and this fits my mind perfectly.
On the other side, the apps are evolving, and like Pmusic - evolving gives complexity. Nowadays we see that bigger apps (Chrome, Ardour, Spotify, LibreOffice, ...) uses their own api/theming.
I wonder how you look at this. Should svg/theming be kept to a minimum to stick to a unified look, or...?
Sigmund