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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

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Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#161

Post by anoncake »

lousken wrote: post #61
anoncake wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Icon themes - should be more standardized, that's true. Why? There is already a standard. It does not specify what icons look like, but what they mean. Replacing an icon with another that has the same meaning is not a problem. Of course, if you, say, abuse the "system-search" icon to show a looking glass, this will not work with a theme using a different metaphor. The icon theme displayed in the open letter is just…

I had to write quite a lot of messages to icon theme devs to add icons I was missing in XFCE with their theme. They happily added them but from users point it seemed like they needed someone to tell them which ones were missing because they just didn't know. So having a more complete list would be nice.

Is the icon naming spec even still maintained? The most recent change log entry is for version 0.8 in 2006, but at the top it says 0.8.90.

Freedesktop.org is kinda bad at showing that it isn't a dead organization.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#162

Post by mises »

jsty wrote: post #82
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only egocentrism I see is all in the pompous article requesting that users do not make perfectly reasonable choices on their own computers. Then attempts to justify on some absurdly contrived grounds. Neither reasonable nor sensible. Imagine if Apple asked users not to apply stickers to their laptop as it denies Apple the possibility to control their brand, or could make the laptop look broken, even unusable - sh…

I'm not sure they're saying that end-users shouldn't make those decisions, simply warning that customised versions of their software won't be supported by upstream to the same degree, and thus distributers should leave the styling as-is. On the first point, to quote the article: "If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aw…

I think that's the point they're trying to make - there is a certain amount of caveat emptor associated with theming. But they don't make it well when they say "don't them our apps".

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#163

Post by ricardobeat »

ricardobeat wrote: post #73
Freak_NL wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using System76's Pop_OS icon theme in Gnome Shell, and like the clean look of it. It changes the icons for a good number of popular applications too, which results in everything looking neat and coherent. > Good. My computer is not your billboard. Yes, seriously. If a user runs a free software desktop, chances are the ability to change things according to their wishes is part of why they use it. > Changing third-…

And also why next year will eternally be the ‘year of Linux on the desktop’, until desktops don’t even exist anymore.

To be clear, I’m responding to the affirmation that delivering app changes without any QA is acceptable.

I’m not against open software or user customization, but this approach does not result in quality software. Distros should be working with application developers and not against them. Here you have a large group of Linux app developers undersigning a plea to stop breaking their software and all they get is scorn and dismissal.

More Elementary, less winamp-skin-distros.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#164

Post by anoncake »

dragonwriter wrote: post #102
avianlyric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t take issue with people expressing opinions, or even pointing out that theming is a platform feature. But I do take issue with attacking developers who write applications for free, and contribute to the Linux ecosystem, for making a reasonable request to platform developers.

> But I do take issue with attacking developers who write applications for free, and contribute to the Linux ecosystem, for making a reasonable request to platform developers. How is releasing software under a license and asking people not do things allowed by that license reasonable?

Asking someone (not) to do something without forcing them does not strike me as unreasonable per se.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#165

Post by lousken »

anoncake wrote: post #161
lousken wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to write quite a lot of messages to icon theme devs to add icons I was missing in XFCE with their theme. They happily added them but from users point it seemed like they needed someone to tell them which ones were missing because they just didn't know. So having a more complete list would be nice.

Is the icon naming spec even still maintained? The most recent change log entry is for version 0.8 in 2006 , but at the top it says 0.8.90. Freedesktop.org is kinda bad at showing that it isn't a dead organization.

I had this issue back in 2013 so I have very little idea what's the current situation, didn't change my icon pack since then, however before I wrote the post I did check archive.org and it seems like last update was around 2011, so nothing's changed since then

The 0.8.90 is also wrong, since then there've been some changes - diff:

+ system-reboot The icon used for the “Reboot” item in the desktop's panel application.

+ user-available The icon used when a user on a chat network is available to initiate a conversation with.

- user-online The icon used when a user on a chat network is available to initiate a conversation with.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#166

Post by tinus_hn »

anoncake wrote: post #39
cuddlecake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. The author presents valid and sensible issues with the state of theming on the GNOME platform. And the overarching topic is essentially User Experience. Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not…

> Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. Actually, it's dismissive of the app developers' egocentrism. In so far as theming breaks usability, they do have a point. Distributions shouldn't make potentially incompatible changes to the default theme without QA. But it's not all the fault of distributions and not respecting branding is not a UX problem. Yes, I may be too harsh towards people volunta…

It’s the same mindset that gave us obligatory Web Fonts. I control my computer not some developer or website builder.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#167

Post by no_identd »

quotemstr wrote: post #157
no_identd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The color change-inducing-friction complaint seems like an issue with lack of built-in theme sanity checking. There exist numerous partial solutions for this already, I'll link to the four best ones I know, albeit I wish someone would combine their approaches into one unified super-product: 1. http://www.hsluv.org/examples/ These palettes will absolutely NEVER clash. But they might have contrast issues. Which brings…

Thanks! Those are all super useful tools. I'm terrible at picking colors myself.

Adobe also has a very interesting color picker:

https://color.adobe.com/

But, unfortunately, it too only serves as a partial solution (since, as far as I know—someone please correct me if I got that wrong—it doesn't address any of the matters discussed above), PLUS it seems highly likely that Adobe has software patents on it.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#168

Post by quantummkv »

microcolonel wrote: post #125
quantummkv wrote: post #8

This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it). GNOME/GTK devs, as usual, got confused and implemented something no one wants. Either you provide a proper and defined way to theme like KDE does or take the windows/mac route and tell developers to recreate any custom themed control from scratch. Instead, they go around saying that there is only one GTK theme and then leave a convenient…

> This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it). How do you think GTK+3 handles theming (or lacks handling for it)? It sounds like you're confusing GTK+3 theming for GTK+2 theming (which was based on "engines", which were quite a mess). Now it's very "proper and defined", it's accomplished with a strict subset of CSS which has fairly consistent behaviour. I personally don't see the po…

Um no, because gtk/gnome devs have explicitly stated that Adwaita is the one true gtk theme. The name "Adwaita" reflects it. In GTK3+, the concept of themes does not exist. This is why you need 3rd party tools to change them. This is why 3rd party themes break stuff that this article complains about.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#169

Post by [deleted] »

cuddlecake wrote: post #17
anoncake wrote: post #2

> GTK Stylesheets can make applications look broken, and even unusable. Bugs are bad, yes. > Icon Themes can change icon metaphors, leading to interfaces with icons that don’t express what the developer intended. That is not a problem if you use icons for the purpose they are intended for. > Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand. Good. My computer is not your billboard. Co…

Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. The author presents valid and sensible issues with the state of theming on the GNOME platform. And the overarching topic is essentially User Experience. Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not…

[deleted]

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#170

Post by pmontra »

cuddlecake wrote: post #17
anoncake wrote: post #2

> GTK Stylesheets can make applications look broken, and even unusable. Bugs are bad, yes. > Icon Themes can change icon metaphors, leading to interfaces with icons that don’t express what the developer intended. That is not a problem if you use icons for the purpose they are intended for. > Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand. Good. My computer is not your billboard. Co…

Your entire comment feels awfully dismissive and egocentric. The author presents valid and sensible issues with the state of theming on the GNOME platform. And the overarching topic is essentially User Experience. Even the slightest change in color can introduce friction between UI elements. Or to be more extreme, if a theme turns your entire app into a white blurry mess, you would get mad at the application, and not…

> And the overarching topic is essentially User Experience.

Which is User experience and not Developer experience. As a developer I can agree with them but as a user I couldn't care less about their brand. Sorry if I sound rude. It's not as if they are paying me to keep their brand consistent among desktops.

I theme a little my desktop because I like the general idea of the GNOME desktop but I don't like many of their graphical choices. Colors, scrollbars, margins are all wrong IMHO.

I'm sorry that those developers are suffering and I know that somebody is thinking about reducing the ability to theme GNOME, but I'll keep doing it as long as I can and if I screw something (my emacs scrollbars) it's on me.

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