Buddy list themes

[Sean Egan]

As you mostly probably all know, Etan has been working on status icon themes:

http://pidgin.im/~deryni/status_themes5.png

This works by packaging up a few .pngs and a .gtkrc file, and then
letting GTK+'s theming take it from there.

On the bus this morning, I thought of a way to extend this to allow
other interesting customizations.

I originally perceived this as an extension of the status icon theme,
but Etan thinks their separate concepts. In either case:

Do the same thing that status icon themes do with gtkrc. This allows
things like fonts, font sizes, colors, background images, etc., to be
set.

In the theme metafile, include a few extra parameters. Something like:

columns=avatar:text:status:expander

for instance, would cause the columns to be ordered as such:

http://pidgin.im/~seanegan/blisttheme.png

Another parameter would be:
textformat=%name% - %status%\n%statusmessage%

or some such, which allows the theme to specify the exact format of
the text that appears. More attributes would be defined here than
would ever be desired.

This allows us to kill "Show Buddy Details" and "Show Idle Times" as
well as the in-consideration "Show Protocol Icons" as everything would
now be configurable on a broader basis.

Thoughts?

-s.