Re: [9front] mothra: proposal

[ori@eigenstate.org]

> On March 18, 2020 7:49:16 PM EDT, sl@stanleylieber.com wrote:
>>i've been maintaining forks of mothra for years.  i don't anticipate
>>making more big changes any time soon, and i have zero time to
>>continue applying the changes from 9front to my several forks.
>>
>>i propose to backport the following changes from my forks to 9front:

Thanks for doing the work. I'll take a look at the code soon,
but a first set of comments after testing it out:

>>	1.) restore original default fonts.
>>		a.) our dejavusans is fuzzy as hell, and it sucks.
>>			1.) users can easily choose their own fonts
>>			and
>>			recompile.

Hm. It looks fine on my screen -- but, sure.

>>	2.) backport my changes to libpanel to remove useless panel
>>	borders and fake shadow lines.  stop underlining hyperlinks,
>>	and instead make them blue.[0][1]
>>		a.) perhaps in a saner manner.
>>			1.) currently, lines, borders, bullet points,
>>			etc., are defined in all sorts of different
>>			places, not even entirely inside of libpanel.
>>			i made no attempt to address this.  in rio,
>>			we ended up putting all the color definitions
>>			into one file, for easy modification.

I'm mostly ok with this, though I'm not a big fan of losing the
"command" vs "body" visual distinction. I also see lines drawn
between menu items. I may want to tweak it a bit more to match
the look of rio/sam windows.

>>	3.) implement -b flag for dark mode, white-on-black text.[2]
>>		a.) similar to rio -b, and vt -b.
>>			1.) users are free to implement any desired
>>			schemes beyond default and -b by configuring
>>			the included .c files.

I don't like theming, but I like the propagation of dark mode
flags even less. If we want this, libdraw needs to signal to
programs which colors they should use, without a '-b' flag.

I know that this way lies bikeshedding. *sigh*.

>>caveat: i do not have a lot of faith in my own ability to backport
>>these changes cleanly.
>>
>>volunteers are welcome.
>>
>>sl
>>
>>[0] http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/src/mothra.white.tgz
>>[1] http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/src/mothra.black.tgz
>>[2] http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/mothra/img/20200310.png

Sending this out in the form of patches would make it easier
to see what's changed.

> forgot:
> 
> 4.) plumb menu item.
> 
> sl

The plumb menu is a definite yes from me.