theme variations

The problem is how to handle multiple themes that are only minor variations of each other.  For example, I will probably want a minor variation of Alex's theme.  Another example is a workgroup variation of a standard theme.

My first thought was to allow single inheritance of themes where derived themes could override methods in base themes.  But I changed my mind and I don't like this for 2 reasons.  One is the fragility we saw with NAML where changing a base theme breaks the derived theme.  The other reason is that this makes it harder for end users to understand themes.

My idea now is to have themes generated by Luan.  So the output of a Luan program would be the source of a theme.  This way I could have one luan file generate multiple themes using "if" statements or whatever logic I need.  The end user would never see this since he only sees the output.  This also means that I don't need to change anything in the Luan source.  Blasma would handle this.  Simpler projects could continue to use static themes.

fschmidt wrote

My idea now is to have themes generated by Luan.  So the output of a Luan program would be the source of a theme.  This way I could have one luan file generate multiple themes using "if" statements or whatever logic I need.  The end user would never see this since he only sees the output.  This also means that I don't need to change anything in the Luan source.  Blasma would handle this.  Simpler projects could continue to use static themes.

For fixed changes (e.g., enable/disable modules) this should work. The problem starts when the user changes the output for some reason (e.g., remove footer, add ads, etc.), so he won't be able to user the theme generator again. We can discuss this tonight.

discussed and implemented, closing