Description Susan McCourt 2010-07-21 17:44:53 EDT

Discussion that started in bug 320553.
I think we need to revisit the structure of the themes extension point.
Or else I'm not understanding it clearly.

As it is now:
- you can define a stylesheet, which has an optional os and ws that can be used to apply it.  The stylesheet defines the uri for the css.
- you can define a theme, which as an optional os, ws, and (as of bug 320553) os-version that apply to it.  The theme has an id (which does not have to be unique).  The idea here is you could define multiple themes of the same id with different os, ws, version characteristics.

Issues I see:
- having multiple themes with the same id seems odd/different than many Eclipse extension points
- not sure when I would want to create a stylesheet element (vs. always referring to it from the theme)

Maybe we want something more like commands and handlers, where the theme is like a command.  For example, a theme called "The New look for e4".  It has a unique id.

Then we can have stylesheets (like a handler) that say, I am the stylesheet for this theme id, when these conditions are met. 

This means an end user would never see themes like "win 7, winxp blue, win xp olive, etc." alongside themes like "classic"

They would just see themes like "new look" and "classic" and the platform-specific style sheets would be resolved using the stylesheet filters.

We would still have to figure out how something like win xp olive fits in to all this.  How would we know to select it?