[mythtv] On Themes & Theming

[Jason Gabriele]

> First, lets get the engine to default at lower level then at the whole 
> theme file.  At the window level is next obvious choice, but I could see 
> even down at the container level.  For fonts, we should allow user font 
> descriptions to override the default ones with a notice or warning 
> instead of throwing an error and saying you can't define a second font 
> with the same name.  That way, I'd get new features in a theme without 
> being forced to update it and when I did update it, I could only update 
> the pieces that are required.  Our goal should be to allow theme 
> developers to include in their files the minimum amount of content 
> required to make the theme.  That way themes are far more likely to 
> remain current.  Right now we are rather on the side of requiring the 
> maximum amount of theme xml.

Some parts of the themes already do this. I would like to see it 
stabilize more, so there were less-frequent updates to the themes. Maybe 
sometime after libmythui comes out that will happen. But yes, it is a 
pain to merge changes to your own theme.

> Second, lets get a section in the main Myth documentation that covers 
> theming and the whole process.  That way when we make changes to the 
> myth core we can update those docs as well, and it can become a more 
> communal process to maintain a theme.

Use the wiki. The documentation is hard to update and no one ever feels 
like writing stuff for it. That's why the wiki was created.

> Lastly, I'd like to recommend we make it easier to upload themes to the 
> main mythtv.org site.  Those that know art and graphics tend not to be 
> developer types and probably won't go through the trouble of posting to 
> the dev list.

The wiki also contains a list of themes. Add yours. 
http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/MythTvThemes

-- 
Jason Gabriele
jason.gabriele at gmail dot com