[mythtv] Theme Discrepancies

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/10/2007 12:10 PM, Matt wrote:
> Also, on a related note, I would also like to draw a little more
> attention to the "themes" folder in trunk.  Why is it seperate?  I
> understand that they are Justin's themes, but if he's contributed them
> to the project, why can't they be merged in with myththemes and/or add
> some of them to the core themes within mythtv?

AIUI, doing so would make the myththemes (or mythtv) package undesirably
large (i.e. short answer, "Too big").

>   I don't understand why
> there is a seperate place for these under svn.mythtv.org, yet the only
> one who really ever modifies them is Justin?  If they're truely not
> going to merged and and the developers aren't going to modify them
> when they modify other themes, then how are these any different than
> third party themes?

Right now they basically are 3rd party themes.  However, Justin and
Stuart and Chris Petersen (at least peripherally)--in addition to the
theme versioning changes I mentioned--have been discussing the idea of
having a theme downloader that would download and install themes from
mythtv-setup (i.e. a lot like xine's theme downloader and probably many
others).  This theme downloader would make use of the aforementioned
versioning changes and would make theme installation/updates much easier
for everyone.  Once this happens, Justin's themes will be "released from
the MythTV basement in which they currently live" :) and other 3rd party
themes may be added to the theme downloader service.

Again, low priority, but perhaps something you'll see in the future.

Note, also, that I'm not trying to speak for Justin, Stuart, or Chris
and am not saying they promise the features that I've mentioned or even
that the features will work as I've described.  What I am trying to say
is that theme stuff is kind of in flux right now.  (And much of the
reason is because for the first time in a long while we have someone
around who has stepped up and put in a lot of effort on the themes. 
Thanks, Justin.)

Your concerns are definitely valid and we (patch writers/users/potential
patch writers) should do what we can to help Justin and the other devs. 
This thread is definitely a good reminder for people looking to write
code that affects themes or to make changes to themes that they should
consider /all/ the themes in mythtv and myththemes packages (and,
probably, should consider Justin's themes) when doing so.

Mike