Notices

From what i've been reading it seems there is lots of steps required to start designing, testing and deploying a new theme. I'm creating this thread to request a simple way to get it all going.


Some of the features i think are pretty much essential:

• Based on SVG: It's much easier to make GUI parts with SVG, and much easier to tweak after made, and if necessary you can even have a bitmap in it (when compiling it would all be baked to PNG or whatever is required). An ake it interact with Inkscape if installed; worse case scenario, besides just importing SVG files, allow firing up Inkscape automaticly loading a temp file for the GUI part you wanna edit, and automaticly updating it back on the theme editor when the temp file is saved.
  
• What You See is What You Get: While editing a theme it should look exactly like it would once installed and running int he N900; lorem ipsum fillers, GUI elements in all possible states (like checkboxes marked, unmarked and greyed out, sliders in several positions, buttons visible, pressed and grayed out etc), this would probably involve having several screens to fit everything
  
• No parameter left out: Things that can't be done with SVG (like choice of typeface and text colors, transition parameters etc, all the additional parameters one might wanna customize in a theme) should be editable within the editor (respecting the WYSIWYG requirement)
  
• Single step copiling: The user shouldn't need to do much more than click a button in order to obtain a .deb ready to install, upload on repositories etc.
  
• Simple click and go installation: It should come in an installer where all you need to do is run and click "OK", "YES", "Next" and other positively worded buttons, worse case have it come in a compressed file that when you decompresss it it will result in a folder with everything already ready to run. ¹
  
• Windows/Multiplatform: I use Windows, unfortunatly i don't see myself using Linux as my main desktop OS in the foreseable future, so please make it work under Windows, and if possible, also in Linux for all the people that are better than me.
  

¹ though Using somthing like Python or Java that is easy to install as well would be acceptable



Consider those items not as absolute requirements for the first released version, but as goals to keep in mind while developing.



The essential features, along with other aspects, are not written in stone, i'm totally open to suggestions and comments on what i should and shouldn't ask/expect etc (should this be moved to the brainstorm forum instead?


edit:bonus points for having simple edits, like moving and aligning things, cutting stuff that need to be composed of separated items, color adjustments etc be possible within the editor itself without need of an additional program.

Read here

http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2010...for-theme.html

It's very easy.

Can you get any more WYSIWYG than Photoshop or Gimp?