[13:55] <ochosi> TheSheep: i'd probably have time later today to discuss your concerns about the theme
[13:55] <TheSheep> ochosi: awesome
[13:55] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Roadmap > new objectives
[13:55] <TheSheep> sure
[13:56] <ochosi> since there were concerns about accessibility
[13:57] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> so i guess the real change was the one from Albatross to Bluebird, but i guess that's up for discussion
[13:58] <ochosi> one reason to create Bluebird was to have a bright alternative to the dark theme
[13:58] <ochosi> TheSheep: sorry, seems now i kinda started the discussion when i just wanted to add a short prologue...
[14:00] <ochosi> TheSheep: we can continue later, i have a meeting now
[16:38] <ochosi> TheSheep: ping
[16:40] <TheSheep> pong
[16:41] <ochosi> i'm back and i have some time for discussion now, so in case you're available...
[16:41] <TheSheep> ok, so let me just explain the motivation first
[16:41] <ochosi> k
[16:47] <TheSheep> sorry, distraction
[16:47] <ochosi> np
[16:47] <TheSheep> so, when you are chainging something
[16:47] <TheSheep> you have to look at what you are doing
[16:47] <TheSheep> in many cases you can just plan ahead and tell the results in advance
[16:48] <TheSheep> but with user interfaces that is not possible because people are too complicated and unpredictable
[16:48] <TheSheep> so you need a different way of telling whether the changes you are making are bringing the expected results
[16:48] <TheSheep> so "work on improving accessibility" is a great starting point
[16:49] <TheSheep> but then you need to ask yourself "how can I tell whether the accessibility has been improved?"
[16:50] <ochosi> mhm
[16:50] <TheSheep> 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] <TheSheep> now, there are several methods of telling that
[16:51] <TheSheep> 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] <TheSheep> this lets you fix obvious mistakes that have been well documented
[16:52] <TheSheep> 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] <TheSheep> obviously this requires some kind of poll or other source of statistics and is generally slow and inaccurate
[16:53] <TheSheep> but it is a kind of feedback
[16:54] <TheSheep> 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] <TheSheep> (or just try them out yourslef, if the improvements are obvious)
[16:55] <TheSheep> 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] <TheSheep> and you verify that it was met
[16:56] <TheSheep> obviously, coming up with those criterions is a lot of work
[16:56] <TheSheep> and they are sometimes arbitrary -- that's ok, they at least show you that you are moving
[16:57] <ochosi> k
[16:57] <TheSheep> ok, so now fo the questions, I'd like to do a kind of retroactive thing
[16:57] <TheSheep> and aks "what has been improved"
[16:57] <TheSheep> ask
[16:58] <TheSheep> for example, there was a reported issue that the theme was too dark
[16:58] <TheSheep> and that issue has been resolved -- the new theme is brighter
[16:59] <ochosi> hm, may i comment on what you wrote above before we continue with the "list of issues"?
[16:59] <TheSheep> of course
[16:59] <ochosi> k, thanks
[17:00] <ochosi> so, i mostly agree with you, you can't always predict the effects of your changes
[17:00] <ochosi> and i guess when moving away from Albatross (as default!, it's still shipped)
[17:00] <ochosi> it was already a few accessibility questions and during the cycle of maverick those questions came up more and more
[17:01] <TheSheep> do you remember those questions?
[17:01] <ochosi> the direction of this move (towards more accessibility) came mostly from charlie-tca, i would say
[17:01] <ochosi> the panel icons weren't visible enough and i guess a few other things
[17:01] <ochosi> i guess they weren't properly written down
[17:02] <TheSheep> I can write them down in the next iteration, if that helps
[17:02] <ochosi> 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] <TheSheep> I mean issues with themes
[17:02] <TheSheep> I don't want to criticize
[17:02] <ochosi> yeah, i mean themes are just a very tiny part of "accessibility"
[17:02] <ochosi> well, i guess i meant to ;)
[17:03] <TheSheep> ah, that's another thing
[17:03] <ochosi> as in your example above: "how many clicks does it take" -> that's maybe a lot more importatnt
[17:03] <TheSheep> in my experience, when you are changing a lot of things at the smae time
[17:03] <TheSheep> you often can't tell which change actually brought the effect
[17:03] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> because you can't change those things in most cases
[17:04] <ochosi> 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] <TheSheep> 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] <ochosi> if you compare the two themes, what i changed is (colorwise): menubar, xfwm-theme, panel-color
[17:04] <ochosi> the rest are really smaller modifications
[17:04] <TheSheep> especially when our resources are limited
[17:04] <ochosi> i also agree on that
[17:05] <TheSheep> I guess I thought I would have more concrete and helpful questions
[17:05] <TheSheep> the bottom line is that I need to pay more attention
[17:05] <TheSheep> do you know where most of the ui discussions are taking place?
[17:06] <TheSheep> mailing list? bug tracker?
[17:06] <ochosi> well, either here or in #shimmer tbh
[17:06] <TheSheep> shimmer?
[17:06] <ochosi> the ml is practically dead (i know it's not a nice thing to say, but it's true...)
[17:06] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> shimmer is the project i'm part of
[17:07] <ochosi> i'm not really an official member of the xubuntu dev-team
[17:07] <ochosi> i'm something like a freelance contributor
[17:07] <TheSheep> me neither
[17:07] <TheSheep> I'm not even a contributor
[17:08] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> but it would be nice if you would test the theme and report issues you find
[17:10] <ochosi> feel free to ping me about that (that's the way specified in the wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Artwork/Natty )
[17:10] <TheSheep> sounds interesting
[17:10] <TheSheep> the project, I mean
[17:10] <ochosi> thanks
[17:10] <ochosi> about the kind of feedback i collect for the theme:
[17:11] <ochosi> for accessibility/visibility-issues i mainly rely on charlie-tca (well, or myself of course, if something is obvious)
[17:11] <ochosi> he is very good at spotting those problems
[17:12] <ochosi> 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] <ochosi> even though i couldn't resolve one of his suggestion (at least not yet) for "more vibrant colors" we discussed it
[17:13] <ochosi> but in general i have to search for feedback, there's hardly any
[17:18] <TheSheep> I will make a new install over the weekend and try to comment on specific things that I see
[17:18] <TheSheep> (my workstation install is too heavily customized for that)
[17:19] <ochosi> thanks
[17:19] <ochosi> a vbox install could also work
[17:19] <TheSheep> I need to fix my libvirt one day :)
[17:19] <ochosi> hehe
[20:19] <maciekPL> hello
[20:19] <TheSheep> hi maciekPL 
[20:20] <maciekPL> 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] <TheSheep> ah, yes, one of the xfce themes is broken
[20:20] <maciekPL> i managet to start graphical enviroment again as root
[20:21] <TheSheep> don't do that
[20:21] <maciekPL> well, I already did that :P how i can fix it so I can use normal user again?
[20:21] <TheSheep> edit ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml
[20:21] <TheSheep> for that user
[20:22] <TheSheep> and either change the theme line or remove it
[20:22] <maciekPL> ok, I`ll do that and tell if it helped
[20:22] <maciekPL> thanks a lot ;)
[20:22] <mr_pouit> (this is a xorg bug, fixed in natty btw)
[20:23] <maciekPL> well, i downloaded an .iso image yesterday, installed it today and it was broken, so developers might want to know that
[20:23] <maciekPL> xubuntu 10.10
[20:24] <maciekPL> ok, I edited this file, let`s see if it worked ;)
[20:27] <maciekPL> It worked, thank a lot! :D
[20:29] <maciekPL> I hope that`s the only bug I`ll find, but now I`ve got some work to do
[20:29] <maciekPL> thanks again ;)