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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

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Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#51

Post by pizza234 »

gammalost wrote: post #27

I don't know why people are against this, it seems reasonable to me. If anyone goes beyond the intended usage (through themes or other modifications) then the developer shouldn't be resposible for supporting it

It's because the GNOME devs (which, I think, includes the GTK ones) have an extremely protective position towards "their" product, which clashes with the open source spirit.

Theming ("branding", as they refer to) is, in a sense, just the core of their marketing campaign.

This is not just ideology - they do try also in practical ways to prevent third party devs from customization.

For a background of how horrible the people involved are, you can start from https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti....

Here's the antisocial answer of one of the GNOME devs:

>> mccann replies:

> I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I’m sorry that this is the case but it wasn’t GNOME’s fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#52

Post by gammalost »

pizza234 wrote: post #51
gammalost wrote: post #27

I don't know why people are against this, it seems reasonable to me. If anyone goes beyond the intended usage (through themes or other modifications) then the developer shouldn't be resposible for supporting it

It's because the GNOME devs (which, I think, includes the GTK ones) have an extremely protective position towards "their" product, which clashes with the open source spirit. Theming ("branding", as they refer to) is, in a sense, just the core of their marketing campaign. This is not just ideology - they do try also in practical ways to prevent third party devs from customization. For a background of how horrible the…

But this isn't an instance of the GNOME or GTK devs complaining. It's an independent person making applications for the platform. If the GNOME devs are against people doing things with their code then it's a whole different issue to this one.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#53

Post by Doxin »

thomasahle wrote: post #18

When I used to write apps for Gnome I would always test with all the available style sheets. Why would you test with just one? At least try an inverted (dark) and a low contrast style.

The gtk debugger even has a convenient dropdown to change the theme on-the-fly.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#54

Post by kirb »

orbital-decay wrote: post #50
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was it, really? When Microsoft implemented arbitrary shapes for windows, Windows apps started to come in all shapes, sizes, and with custom theming engines. Music players were particularly prone to this - not even talking about apps like Sonique, but Microsoft's very own Windows Media Player was like that. So no, it wasn't web; the dominating desktop OS always lacked the UI consistency.

Adding onto your point, I’m reminded of the video “Chain of Fools”, where a machine is upgraded from Windows 1.0 all the way through to Windows 8. Once he reaches XP, the theme he configured back in one of the first Windows versions just disappears and gets overridden with XP’s defaults. Then it happens again and again for every version since then, despite the guy changing the theme back to his custom one before each upgrade.

https://youtu.be/vPnehDhGa14

So the phenomenon really started with Microsoft themselves. Sure, the more muted dialog backgrounds and vibrant foreground elements introduced since XP look far better than the Win95-esque greys, but I’m sure people who created their own themes (probably due to disability like color blindness) like their colors better than Microsoft’s.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#56

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

_2paq wrote: post #38

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 ope…

Hasn't that always been the trade-off of GNOME over KDE? GNOME is very much the "we know what's right for you" desktop environment for Linux, KDE is the "customize ALL the things" desktop environment.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#57

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

_2paq wrote: post #38

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 ope…

I recently switched from KDE to Upstream GNOME because I was tired of long pending bugs(e.g. Dolphin/Baloo going rogue) while new features keep getting added. I was surprised to find how refined GNOME is, everything just works.

I understood that my misconceptions of GNOME was because of how it was integrated in the distros especially inconsistent theming and this letter states why it is so.

I can confidently recommend upstream GNOME confidently to someone migrating from Windows/macOS to Linux for the first time over other DE due this consistency.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#58

Post by nine_k »

_2paq wrote: post #38

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 ope…

> why lots of developers have chosen GNOME/GTK to build their own desktop environment

Because the licensing status of Qt was for a long time somehow murky [1]. By 2000 when it was GPL'd many now-current desktop environments have already been born.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)#History_of_Qt

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#59

Post by eropple »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #42
eropple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is aimed at distributions breaking apps by default, not tinkerers playing with their own setup. The objection here is that distributions are building incompatible system themes that break standard GNOME expectations and make applications more confusing for users. They're not talking about individuals messing with their systems.

If I pick eOS because I like its look and feel, I sure hope eOS attempts to make that look and feel as consistent across apps as possible.

Then eOS should be fielding look-and-feel bugs for the stuff that they changed, shouldn't they?

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#60

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

eropple wrote: post #59
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I pick eOS because I like its look and feel, I sure hope eOS attempts to make that look and feel as consistent across apps as possible.

Then eOS should be fielding look-and-feel bugs for the stuff that they changed, shouldn't they?

Sure, and my experience is that most distros do.
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