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Re: [e4-dev] modernizing the workbench visual design and remaining a good platform citizen


Tom -

Can you put these


From: Tom Schindl <tom.schindl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: E4 Project developer mailing list <e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 12/07/2009 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] modernizing the workbench visual design and remaining        a good platform citizen
Sent by: e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx





Susan Franklin McCourt schrieb:
> Hi, everyone.
> We had a brief discussion on the e4 call about this topic and thought it
> would be good to make sure everyone is aware of it.
>
> We are currently working with a graphic designer to modernize the style
> of the Eclipse 4.0 workbench. That is, what is the default stylesheet
> for the Eclipse SDK running on e4?
>
> One of the more interesting constraints, which we've always had in
> Eclipse, is balancing the desire for a custom/modern UI with respect for
> platform look and feel, and the user's platform theme. In Eclipse 3.x,
> we've done this by using native widgets in most places, and looking up
> system colors as a reference point when choosing colors.
>
> For e4, we still walk this line. Sure, we will have the technology to
> completely reskin the workbench, and folks are free to do so. But for
> the default look, I believe we will still be balancing these concerns.
> We may take more leeway in applying gradients, changing tab shapes,
> using background images or shading, but all of this should be done while
> still blending with the platform theme choices.
>
> CSS support presents a new wrinkle. It's not good enough to simply make
> the right color choices for the workbench. Sure, we can do the math
> internally and pick the right colors. But it would be ideal if we could
> provide developers with the ability to style their own applications in
> this platform respecting way, and include web components that could
> blend nicely. Since CSS is RGB-based for color attributes, we're looking
> at ways to specify a more HSV-style color for elements, where the hue
> could optionally be ignored and instead be derived from platform theme
> colors. Note we aren't just talking about background colors for images
> and gradients. We'd like to be able to specify widget colors in this
> way. How should this be specified in a stylesheet?


What I'd like to see is in Declarative-Styling (often referred to as CSS):

a) Access to SWT-Color-Constants like SWT.COLOR_TITLE_BACKGROUND, ....

------8<------
background-color: swt-title-background
------8<------

b) A transformation matrix which can be applied to the color. Somthing like:

------8<------
background-color: transform( swt-title-background, %transform-matrix% );
------8<------

c) Teach the Styling-Engine your own colors:

------8<------
background-color: my-personal-color
------8<------

I can only once more point to UFfaceKit whose styling engine already
implements a) and c) and internally pumps in the colors from
Form-Toolkit into the declarative styling.

Tom

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