[yocto] Hob implementation: vanilla or branded?

[Barros Pena, Belen]

Hi all,

As part of the Hob work for the 1.3 release it looks like we need to make
a visual design and implementation decision: do we want a 'vanilla' or a
'branded' look for Hob? Sorry if the choice of words is not the best.
Neither 'vanilla' nor 'branded' are meant in any negative way.

We did have this conversation when we started work on the 1.2 release of
Hob, but somehow we settled for a middle way that is not working well and
is causing issues like bug 1701. From my conversations with UI engineers
and people with lots of experience in building applications using the GTK
toolkit, the middle way just doesn't work.

What I mean by 'vanilla' is an implementation that takes the visual
appearance from the theme installed in the Hob host. The main advantage of
vanilla implementations is they guarantee that Hob will play nicely with
its host computer.

What I mean by branded is a visually customised appearance which, apart
from basic UI elements like window chrome and window controls, takes no
input from the host theme. The advantage of this approach is full control
over the Hob appearance (Hob should look like Hob no matter what Linux
distribution you are using).

Personally, I have no preferences: I think both have strengths and
weaknesses and I am happy to go with any of the two. What I wouldn't like
is sticking to a half-way-in-between approach which is giving us a lot of
grief.

I would like to know what the Yocto Project community thinks about these 2
approaches.

Thanks!

Belen

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