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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

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Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#31

Post by notatoad »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #23
asperous wrote: post #19

The article says clearly they are talking about distros that apply system wide themes without checking that all GTK applications still look good and not taking about people tinkering. Distros do this because it looks good in screenshots and give the system a unique flare, but it gives all these applications a bad image when people try them and they look terrible. Is the expectation that programs like geary should loo…

Apps should be designed with the goal of being themeable. Applications need to supply hints and avoid e.g. icons with baked in BG.

apps are designed with many goals, and have to make compromises on where they put their efforts. i'm sure they would all love to have the resources to devote to theming, but it's not realistict to expect apps to prioritize theme support over core functionality.

and even if they were designed to be themeable, that doesn't address many of the other concerns here - designing an app to be themeable doesn't automatically update the documentation with whatever custom themes get applied, or ensure that the icons you've chosen in your theme make sense in the context of the app. "apps should be themeable" seems to be the point of this manifesto - the app developers could just block themeing entirely if they wanted to. they don't want to do that, they seem to just be asking that if a distro wants to apply a theme to an app, then that distro should be the ones doing the QA to make sure the app still functions as intended with the custom theme, and that documentation is still available for users who experience the themed version of the app.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#32

Post by Jach »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #15
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #3

This is the antithesis of open source and the things that drew me to Linux in the 90s and 00s

To expand: the web gave us a mindset where developers and designers dictate to everyone else how their app will look. Beforehand, that was up to the OS, the windowing system and/or the user. Now, it’s fair to ask that problems with appearances be reported to the intermediate themers first, but this invasion of the web mindset is profoundly anti-user and anti-community.

It wasn't even really until the modern web that this happened; the browser is called the User Agent because it's acting on behalf of the user, not the website. CSS Zen Garden showed what you could do just by changing CSS. Even today though you can still do what you want to a lot of sites, from adblocking, to restyling with things like Stylus, or full custom JS with Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey. It's the OS apps that are less customizable, but I don't want them to become even less so.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#33

Post by armchairhacker »

Why is everyone on the internet so argumentative (ironic i know)?

Just say "Our apps aren't designed to work with themes. Take this into consideration when you distribute or use a distributed theme". Yeah it's more passive. But with the former, you're starting fights with people for no reason. You don't care when users theme your app, you care when they download a themed version and complain to you when it's broken.

And users too, need to stop rudely complaining when a free and open-source app doesn't support some theme. They don't have any obligation to do anything. People being rude to OSS maintainers drives them to leave open-source and avoid features (like themes).

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#34

Post by TheCowboy »

errantspark wrote: post #29

What an absolutely wild opinion to hold! Kind of speechless at the hubris, especially in this context.

The authors took care to carefully express their intentions, wishes, and argument. I find it disappointing to see many comments like this that want to injure more than discuss.

A conversation about the expectations and burdens that people take on when volunteering their time to develop open source software is beneficial to everyone, and at the very least it is worth understanding their point of view. Maybe some solution results from speaking up. Maybe not, but at least they tried to engage with people before giving up.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#35

Post by a_t48 »

Jach wrote: post #21
a_t48 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.

Yeah I changed my Firefox icon to go away from the POS it became, I'm totally going to blame any Firefox bugs on my icon. This page is ridiculous.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Pretty sure this includes the article, too. ;)

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#37

Post by ruph123 »

pratio wrote: post #28

I'll add it to the list of reasons why Linux desktops have a long way to go before becoming mainstream. Brings back memories of jwz. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop... please be careful clicking this link from HN. He doesn't like the HN crowd very much. I understand the app developers, if you have to support end users because unexpected changes were made not even by the users themselves,…

Which other mainstream operating systems allow to apply global themes?

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#38

Post by _2paq »

https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1433088460655452162

I don't know why lots of developers have chosen GNOME/GTK to build their own desktop environment (Cinnamon, Solus, PopOS etc) but at this point, it's pretty clear that GNOME/GTK developers don't care one bit about them. They want to control their apps and their ecosystem and don't want anyone telling them what to do. GNOME/GTK is heading toward Google's open source model of "look but don't touch". Anything that doesn't conform to their way is a "hack".

If Jeremy and others really want to control their own desktop environments and apps and themes, they should start searching for alternatives (Qt?) or build their own. It's a mistake to consider GNOME/GTK as a community project.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#39

Post by pavon »

Gnome and GTK are designed with themes as a core feature, and have been for ages. This is like refusing to support application menus (vs window menus) when they became a core part of Gnome. I personally may not use them, but it is part of the system UI guidelines, and if I want my app to integrate with the rest of the system, I need to support it.

Discussing what makes themes difficult to support - how to design themes that don't break good apps, and how to design apps that don't break with good themes - would be far more productive than telling people not to use a core feature of their desktop.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#40

Post by jrockway »

Jach wrote: post #21
a_t48 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.

Yeah I changed my Firefox icon to go away from the POS it became, I'm totally going to blame any Firefox bugs on my icon. This page is ridiculous.

Debian had a really good solution to this problem -- they just called Firefox "Iceweasel". I don't even remember what they were mad about but it makes me giggle every time it shows up.
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