Comment 17 for bug 284975

Let's look at this in perspective.

The current workaround with a pre-set panel background is applied to resolve an issue that affects the GNOME desktop on every distribution, which the GNOME folks are presumably aware of and maybe even working on. Certain applets look really ugly when used upon a panel with fancy background as set by the theme. It is a cosmetic issue most noticeable when users choose to customize their panels. Bugs should be filed for the respective applications because these problems need to be fixed.

However, the workaround produces some cosmetic issues relating to customization:
 * If the user changes his theme, his panel contents will likely become unreadable. This is especially problematic with the high contrast themes.
 * If the user creates a new panel, it will have the theme's default panel background, which is plain white, as before. That is confusing. He will not know how to get back to the default panel background.

I think a user is more prone to change his theme than to add an offending applet to the panel, especially at the moment with Ubuntu and /especially/ since Intrepid has some really nice looking themes in the repositoeis (most of which are meant to have dark panels, I should add). Further, with this workaround, some bad things happen to the process:
 * We gain a kludge. I can imagine this workaround evolving into some kind of horrifying beast of ugly that spans every GNOME-using distro out there.
 * Bug reports and issues are spawned from users with unreadable panels, saying that the panel is not updating or some such thing. Instead of reports hitting the actual source of the problem, momentum builds around enhancing the workaround. Tomboy and Workrave continue to behave poorly as panel applets and the panel continues to permit this because there is no longer bug tracker noise toward fixing it on their end.
 * It will then be noted that "Ubuntu's panel is broken", while Fedora's and SUSE's works fine. Much confusion ensues.

Overstated, yes, but my point is that this workaround is entirely cosmetic (and it does look pretty). Its negative impact to functionality far outweighs the positives.

And that's my thought. Other thoughts are of course welcome :)