[Sugar-devel] Appearance Customization

[Mike Dawson]

Hi All,

Following on from:

http://codewiz.org/wiki/blog/2010/03#mon-mar-8--children-want-sugar-084-for-the-wrong-reasons

The most popular request on the ground here follows from the same
thing that kids will do with any device that they feel ownership of:
let's make it colourful.  It would be great if they could choose their
own colours for the grays that are currently around at the moment.
Wallpaper would be great as well - particularly if they could take
that from their image activities in the journal for example.  That
said just having their own choice of colours would put a smile on a
lot of faces around here.  That was even the number one remark of the
prev deputy minister of teacher training and curriculum!

I know it sounds hollow - but from the field here in Afghanistan:

1. Appearances matter quite a lot more in the east than they do in the
west.  If you look back at western history many things used to be
fancier.  If it doesn't look nice it's obvious no one has put any
effort into it and it's not that great.  There are so many more
coloured car lights, xmas lights in trees all year, etc etc.  That's
the culture.

2. For kids / child ownership - kids putting stickers on things should
be a hint!  It's also a great way to let kids show off their paint /
photo creations etc.  Kids want to make things their own - so this
would seem appropriate.

Does anyone have any rough estimates on what it would take to get this
done?  Unfortunately I'm too busy with EXE development to facilitate
content at the moment to have the chance right now (new version of
that with math drills, reading exercises, crossword and more in the
works there).  I think most people in deployments would agree that
this feature ranks consistently highly and surely would be just a
matter of making a control panel app, a couple gconf keys, and a
little bit of hacking the gtk theme I guess.

I'd also be willing to put up for a bounty.  Any others with me on
that?  I put $200 on the table right now.

Regards,

-Mike