[13:55] TheSheep: i'd probably have time later today to discuss your concerns about the theme [13:55] ochosi: awesome [13:55] TheSheep: one thing i wanted to mention though is that changing the theme has been on the roadmap for natty since the beginning [13:55] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Roadmap > new objectives [13:55] sure [13:56] since there were concerns about accessibility [13:57] also let me mention in advance that the current theme is based on the previous one and is a reworking towards more accessibility [13:57] so i guess the real change was the one from Albatross to Bluebird, but i guess that's up for discussion [13:58] one reason to create Bluebird was to have a bright alternative to the dark theme [13:58] TheSheep: sorry, seems now i kinda started the discussion when i just wanted to add a short prologue... [14:00] TheSheep: we can continue later, i have a meeting now [16:38] TheSheep: ping [16:40] pong [16:41] i'm back and i have some time for discussion now, so in case you're available... [16:41] ok, so let me just explain the motivation first [16:41] k [16:47] sorry, distraction [16:47] np [16:47] so, when you are chainging something [16:47] you have to look at what you are doing [16:47] in many cases you can just plan ahead and tell the results in advance [16:48] but with user interfaces that is not possible because people are too complicated and unpredictable [16:48] so you need a different way of telling whether the changes you are making are bringing the expected results [16:48] so "work on improving accessibility" is a great starting point [16:49] but then you need to ask yourself "how can I tell whether the accessibility has been improved?" [16:50] mhm [16:50] because if you can't, you can't really be sure that you are improving it, and your changes may as well be worsening it or doing something entirely different [16:50] now, there are several methods of telling that [16:51] the simplest one is "there have been such and such issues reported, and we made changes so that the issues are not present anymore" [16:51] this lets you fix obvious mistakes that have been well documented [16:52] another one is "such and such percentage of people with disabilities have been using xubuntu before, but now more are moving to it" [16:53] obviously this requires some kind of poll or other source of statistics and is generally slow and inaccurate [16:53] but it is a kind of feedback [16:54] another one is user stories -- you identify a number of things you would like people to be able to perform, then measure how well they do it, and after changes, measure how another gorup performs with them [16:54] (or just try them out yourslef, if the improvements are obvious) [16:55] and last way I wanted to mention are goals -- you set yourself a goal like "sending an e-mail should require no more than 3 clicks" [16:55] and you verify that it was met [16:56] obviously, coming up with those criterions is a lot of work [16:56] and they are sometimes arbitrary -- that's ok, they at least show you that you are moving [16:57] k [16:57] ok, so now fo the questions, I'd like to do a kind of retroactive thing [16:57] and aks "what has been improved" [16:57] ask [16:58] for example, there was a reported issue that the theme was too dark [16:58] and that issue has been resolved -- the new theme is brighter [16:59] hm, may i comment on what you wrote above before we continue with the "list of issues"? [16:59] of course [16:59] k, thanks [17:00] so, i mostly agree with you, you can't always predict the effects of your changes [17:00] and i guess when moving away from Albatross (as default!, it's still shipped) [17:00] it was already a few accessibility questions and during the cycle of maverick those questions came up more and more [17:01] do you remember those questions? [17:01] the direction of this move (towards more accessibility) came mostly from charlie-tca, i would say [17:01] the panel icons weren't visible enough and i guess a few other things [17:01] i guess they weren't properly written down [17:02] I can write them down in the next iteration, if that helps [17:02] that's something you can criticize around here, that things are not always perfectly documented (but in fact you might find this in old meeting minutes, if it was mentioned there) [17:02] I mean issues with themes [17:02] I don't want to criticize [17:02] yeah, i mean themes are just a very tiny part of "accessibility" [17:02] well, i guess i meant to ;) [17:03] ah, that's another thing [17:03] as in your example above: "how many clicks does it take" -> that's maybe a lot more importatnt [17:03] in my experience, when you are changing a lot of things at the smae time [17:03] you often can't tell which change actually brought the effect [17:03] but with the kind of manpower the xubuntu project has atm it's something you can't even spend time on thinking about [17:03] because you can't change those things in most cases [17:04] about changing a lot of things at the same time: i agree, but (even though it might seem differently) i didn't do that [17:04] if you concentrate on one thing at a time, it often helps to pin down what was done right and what needs further improvement [17:04] if you compare the two themes, what i changed is (colorwise): menubar, xfwm-theme, panel-color [17:04] the rest are really smaller modifications [17:04] especially when our resources are limited [17:04] i also agree on that [17:05] I guess I thought I would have more concrete and helpful questions [17:05] the bottom line is that I need to pay more attention [17:05] do you know where most of the ui discussions are taking place? [17:06] mailing list? bug tracker? [17:06] well, either here or in #shimmer tbh [17:06] shimmer? [17:06] the ml is practically dead (i know it's not a nice thing to say, but it's true...) [17:06] and the bug tracker, hmwell, not sure that's used so much for theming issues (apart from a chromium theming bug i solved for greybird) [17:07] shimmer is the project i'm part of [17:07] i'm not really an official member of the xubuntu dev-team [17:07] i'm something like a freelance contributor [17:07] me neither [17:07] I'm not even a contributor [17:08] if you're interested in the development-part of what i'm doing you can a) either hang out in #shimmer or b) monitor these pages: http://wiki.knome.fi/ [17:09] but it would be nice if you would test the theme and report issues you find [17:10] feel free to ping me about that (that's the way specified in the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Artwork/Natty ) [17:10] sounds interesting [17:10] the project, I mean [17:10] thanks [17:10] about the kind of feedback i collect for the theme: [17:11] for accessibility/visibility-issues i mainly rely on charlie-tca (well, or myself of course, if something is obvious) [17:11] he is very good at spotting those problems [17:12] and then of course i'd be happy to get more feedback from the community, i also had a longer discussion with thorwil [17:13] even though i couldn't resolve one of his suggestion (at least not yet) for "more vibrant colors" we discussed it [17:13] but in general i have to search for feedback, there's hardly any [17:18] I will make a new install over the weekend and try to comment on specific things that I see [17:18] (my workstation install is too heavily customized for that) [17:19] thanks [17:19] a vbox install could also work [17:19] I need to fix my libvirt one day :) [17:19] hehe [20:19] hello [20:19] hi maciekPL [20:20] I`m herejust to ask about strange bug... when i was trying to change theme of xfce something crashed and now i cannot login [20:20] ah, yes, one of the xfce themes is broken [20:20] i managet to start graphical enviroment again as root [20:21] don't do that [20:21] well, I already did that :P how i can fix it so I can use normal user again? [20:21] edit ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml [20:21] for that user [20:22] and either change the theme line or remove it [20:22] ok, I`ll do that and tell if it helped [20:22] thanks a lot ;) [20:22] (this is a xorg bug, fixed in natty btw) [20:23] well, i downloaded an .iso image yesterday, installed it today and it was broken, so developers might want to know that [20:23] xubuntu 10.10 [20:24] ok, I edited this file, let`s see if it worked ;) [20:27] It worked, thank a lot! :D [20:29] I hope that`s the only bug I`ll find, but now I`ve got some work to do [20:29] thanks again ;)