THAT's exactly what i have been talking about!
As a teacher at a private design academy there is one thing that i
can confirm to you without a doubt: 1 out of 10 designers might be
so curious and have the fun, the time and be so patient to try to get something into the extras repository.
The rest simply will give up as soon as they have to learn
anything about packaging.
Most of the designers i work with ofen enough even do not know how
to name filenames correctly (using special chars, spaces etc.) and
now you want them to get into repository handling ?!
Good luck!
Short answer is yes
Long answer is yes I do think they should learn to put there package in the repo. It isn't that hard. I have a script that is easy to change that will build your source deb for you then you use the web uploader to upload the source thats it. Most of the users of the themes will get them from the repo so if you want people to use them they need to be there.
I wonder if it's possible to do more lifting on the server side. Maybe have a wallpaper upload area that just accepts 4 images, validates them in some way (are you 800x480? are there 4 of you? are the filenames valid/sane?) and then builds a source deb and submits it to the autobuilder. and I believe theme-maker *already* builds a .deb out of a them template. If designers have problems with the process, maybe it could be improved then, but I really like the idea of having a cetralized repository for all things maemo. We've already been in the multiple repos situation, and it was extraordinarily bad (though admittedly, theme scattered all around the net is less of a problem then software/libs scattered all over).
Just my 2c.
Since some of you think that designer should be able to make packages and scripts and stuff, I suppose it will sound fair to you that all programmers should be able to draw cool UI's and icons in PS, it's not that hard, eh, programmers are just too lazy and not curious, according to you.
But the fact is, that both designers and programmers have lots of stuff to do in their fields, it's much faster, better and stronger if people do what they are supposed to do.
I'm really surprised that I hear that silly thought from a teacher in private design academy.
P.S.: and we have Theme Maker anyway :P
Theme maker doesn't make source packages I think you might be able to upload them as non-free packages. I just tear apart my deb an rebuild it as a source package. Just so everyone knows also I'm not a programmer I'm just a theme designer for the first year I did themes I couldn't package them my self, I know have a simple script I use to build my source debs on the tablet then upload to extras using web site. The amount of time it takes to design an make a theme is much greater then the time it takes to build the proper package.
So I'm thinking at the moment that it may not be worth me making an n900themes version of the site - it's simply far less demand than for wallpapers and the infrastructure is already set up here. However, is there a way i can filter the downloads section there just for themes? I'd like to be able to point n900themes.com directly at maemo.org.
So I'm thinking at the moment that it may not be worth me making an n900themes version of the site - it's simply far less demand than for wallpapers and the infrastructure is already set up here. However, is there a way i can filter the downloads section there just for themes? I'd like to be able to point n900themes.com directly at maemo.org.
How does that sound to everyone?
I was thinking the same thing. Apparently the themes are mixed up with all the rest.. If the theme maker application and N900 get popular, I really hope they create a "Themes" category or it will really be a mess...
Searching for the "theme" keyword returned naturally all themes, but every theme submitter has to add the "theme" word in the title, no normal application must contain that word, and browsing in the category without searching may become really confusing.
