[FC7 theme proposal] Flying High with Fedora 7 - Round 2

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 08:56 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> John Baer wrote:
> > 
> > Posted some additional artwork submissions to the round 2 page.
> > 
> > Just for fun I made an Open Office and Gimp splash screen.
> 
> Question: do we want customized splash screens for such applications?
> - the splash for OpenOffice.org was customized for a while (around 
> FC2-FC3) in the Bluecurve style.;
> - the GIMP splash was never (AFAIK) customized in RHL/Fedora;
> - in the current FC6 the Eclipse splash is customized ("Fedora Eclipse") 
> but is not related at all to the rest of the desktop theming.

I think we should avoid theming splash screens because

 a) splash screens are generally not themeable; hence

    a1) extra work for package owners for patching it in - including
        all the work communicating with said maintainers; and

    a2) splash screen don't respect the theme; e.g. the splash
        screen used is hard-wired and don't change if you change
        the theme. 

    a3) Thus, I can't go and create a davidz-artwork RPM package
        and expect the splash screen I've made for e.g. OO.o to just
        magically be used.

 b) some applications take pride in their splash screen and branding
    it might be considered offensive. For example this applies to
    The Gimp where there's, IIRC, a competition for splash screens

 c) many developers (including most people working on Fedora) generally
    consider splash screens to be bad; instead applications should just
    start up really fast. That said, at least Banshee gained a splash
    screen some time ago

 d) splash screens are only shown for 1) a short time (if at all); and
    2) only when launching specific apps; so, at least to the
    cost/benefit of doing splash screens isn't really justified

Hope this clarifies, otherwise just ask! Thanks!

      David