Contest?

[Llorean]

Unfortunately we can't assume that, and we don't have that posted anywhere.

The best bet may to be to create a "BrokenWPS" wiki page, and just dump every single one that doesn't work there. They're not deleted, but they aren't in the good lists.

[soap]

Ok then, on top of everything else, to get the "Soap Seal of Approval" a WPS should have an open source license.
 

[RedBreva]

I will say, I don't think resetting to the original iconset is mandatory.

If I find an iconset I like (say a 12x12 one that'll fit many themes), it would be extremely frustrating to have to re-set the icon-set on every theme change.

But if your favoured iconset is white, and a theme with a white background loads...  At the very least a white or black iconset should be loaded with every theme - to ensure that they remain visible.

I feel that the icons, now that feature is available, should be 'part' of the theme, isn't it similar to themes switching off the status bar?

You are after all selecting a Theme, if you only want the WPS, for example, browse WPS and only load that, if you only want the backdrop, browse and load that...??  
I would even go so far as to suggest that the Theme loading mechanism reset backdrops, statusbars, iconsets, fore/background colours to your configured prefernces before loading the theme... then the theme writer does not need to remember to reset anything he/she is not changing...

BTW, I also like the current trend to include a copy of the required font in the theme zip, even when it is in the font pack...  should minimise a number of failures when the user missed the fact that they needed to download them...

[Llorean]

If your favorite set is white, and suddenly if vanishes, you don't lose any real functionality. Meanwhile, a theme resetting the icons to default because they don't include an iconset (which the majority won't for quite some time) is very frustrating. You'll have to set your theme twice, every time.


The theme loading mechanism should NOT reset anything automatically, EVER. This completely removes the ability to mix and match themes.

I personally like to load a .wps file, a font, and an iconset separately. You're saying that we should mandate that users cannot change their iconset after loading a theme, without resetting the theme.

[RedBreva]

I personally like to load a .wps file, a font, and an iconset separately. You're saying that we should mandate that users cannot change their iconset after loading a theme, without resetting the theme.

No, I am saying that a theme is a complete set of components as decided by a theme author to maintain a consistent look and feel to their creation.  That would only kick in if you browsed and loaded a theme.  If you just wanted to use a WPS that was supplied as part of a theme, you would browse WPS's and load that part of the theme only, etc... this would prevent accidental theme mismatch where a theme author had missed setting correct colours etc.

I would even go so far as to suggest that the Theme loading mechanism reset backdrops, statusbars, iconsets, fore/background colours to your configured prefernces before loading the theme...

In fact I said that 'your configured preferences' (spelling mistakes apart) - so if you have a prefered iconset for example and loaded a new theme to try it, it had a different iconset, you then loaded another theme with no iconset as part of the theme - your prefered iconset would be re-loaded (from your .cfg file)

In the long run it would ensure that the best themes were fully configured, and that less accurately specified themes would be corrected or abandoned.

I wouldn't want anyone to lose flexibility here, only make it a more consistent and reliable experience for new users.  Experienced users can recover from black text on black background etc, and would probably modify the theme file to create their own mix and match compositions. New users trying a couple of themes after just loading rockbox would not...

I have no axe to grind either way on this as I haven't changed the 'theme' on either of my boxes since day one - except for bugfixes - but think it could be more 'consumer friendly' than it is at present...

[Llorean]

Your statement shows a complete misunderstanding of how .cfg files work.

They're all treated the same (themes, iconsets, standard cfgs, equalizer presets), they're all *just* config files. Your requirement means distinguishing some way between whether a .cfg is a theme, an eq preset, or otherwise, or distinguishing as to whether a setting should be reset if not present, or left the same if not present. Both of which break how .cfg files work presently. Loading things from a preferred .cfg file when they're not present is somewhat silly: Every time someone clicked on an equalizer presets, it'd reset every other setting to the preferred one. And if you say "only with themes", you're forcing people to use the "Browse themes" option, or otherwise designate a theme WPS: What about those of us who switch themes for in-car use but choose a very limited theme that only changes certain aspects of the view (font and color, perhaps, not even WPS?).

I think any theme that changes the text color should also change the backdrop or background, and any theme that does *not* change the text color should reset it to the default (manually), but this should never be enforced in code, because it prevents the use of flexible .cfg files. Instead it should be enforced in themes.

But what does "black on black" have to do with iconsets? Why on Earth should a theme force a reset of iconsets to the default, just because?

I can see perhaps a default iconset being chosen if the new font height is less than the iconset height, MAYBE, but I don't see resetting the icon set every single time a theme is changed as a valid option.

[lights0ut]

Llorean, I'm starting to agree to your way of thinking on this whole icons issue. In summary are you saying that if a theme has a specific iconset for the theme it should set and if there is no iconset for the theme, the cfg should leave the icons alone. After all this discussion I think that makes the most sense.

[RedBreva]

I have made a start on a Wikipage to sum up these notes

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/ThemeGuidelines

Feel free to amend and expand...

[lights0ut]

just wondering if anyone was still interested in this? I'm currently in the process of acting on my plans to reorganize the WPS gallery (mainly the iPod 5G), and I was thinking of doing a mass round of debugging after I was done (depending on how much effort I exert on reorganizing)