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Please don’t theme our apps

stopthemingmy.app

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Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#71

Post by _2paq »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #64
_2paq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would obviously be easier for GNOME to ship an apparently more refined experience when customization possibilities are negligible and basic features are missing. One can't even change the fonts of GNOME out of the box without first installing Tweak Tool and even then, you can't change the font of GNOME Shell itself. If you dare customize the CSS to change it, you're implementing "hacks". I wouldn't be surprised if…

In some situations, changing the font could absolutely considered a hack -- this can break apps in subtle ways by messing with the spacing and sizing of elements, and it gets worse if you designed your app for some specific form factor(s). It's perfectly reasonable for an app developer to say they only support certain fonts. I'm sorry if that's disappointing to hear, but every app developer cannot be expected to test…

> In some situations, changing the font could absolutely considered a hack

I'm eagerly waiting for the day when it becomes impossible to make any sort of customisation at all in GNOME/GTK apps besides what the app developer intends. Now that user themes have been axed, I hope fonts, font size, and icons are axed as well and Adwaita, Cantarell (that's the default GNOME font right?), and GNOME Icons are enforced everywhere. It certainly won't be surprising for me if this happens and things seem to headed in this direction.

I'm sorry to see that Jeremy still hasn't figured out that GNOME/GTK isn't a community project and is still trying to engage with their devs about themes even though the recoloring API page clearly says that system themes won't be supported.

> for example KDE apps should run just fine inside GNOME, and vice versa

Yeah, I doubt that. Even if somehow it does look fine right now, I don't think it will soon.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3409

> I don't have any comments on the file chooser, anything we say is flogging a dead horse.

Yeah, I know. It's pointless to have discussions, especially when the project in question isn't a community project and follows the "look but don't touch" open source model of development.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#72

Post by _2paq »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #67
_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…

Please don't jump to these baseless conclusions based on a misinterpretation of one twitter post. The issue here is with libadwaita, not with GTK, and if you actually read the gitlab issue chain by that person then you will see that progress is being made: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/259 >It's a mistake to consider GNOME/GTK as a community project. You're getting this wrong -- GNOME is very muc…

> Please don't jump to these baseless conclusions based on a misinterpretation of one twitter post. The issue here is with libadwaita, not with GTK, and if you actually read the gitlab issue chain by that person then you will see that progress is being made: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/259

Please don't dismiss my statements as baseless. The presence of an issue does not imply progress. Jeremy is asking for a theming API or a method to let apps use a different theme besides Adwaita.

> Jeremy: I'm curious if you think there is a best way to have GNOME core apps continue to use our own theme.

> Clasen: If you ask me, the answer is no. To the best of my understanding, linking to libadwaita is an explicit decision to use the Adwaita theme.

I don't think there's any confusion or baseless assumption on my end.

> You're getting this wrong -- GNOME is very much a community project

Doesn't look like a community project to me, not in the least. It's as much a community project as Android (AOSP) is.

> This is not about making someone conform to anyone's way, this is about distros working with app developers to provide the best possible experience for users.

And GNOME/GTK devs get to decide what's the best possible experience for the user — removing any customization possibilities for the sake of consistency. If anyone doesn't like that, they can piss off. This is pretty much what "making someone conform to someone's way" looks like.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#73

Post by lavabiopsy »

_2paq wrote: post #72
lavabiopsy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't jump to these baseless conclusions based on a misinterpretation of one twitter post. The issue here is with libadwaita, not with GTK, and if you actually read the gitlab issue chain by that person then you will see that progress is being made: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/259 >It's a mistake to consider GNOME/GTK as a community project. You're getting this wrong -- GNOME is very muc…

> Please don't jump to these baseless conclusions based on a misinterpretation of one twitter post. The issue here is with libadwaita, not with GTK, and if you actually read the gitlab issue chain by that person then you will see that progress is being made: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/259 Please don't dismiss my statements as baseless. The presence of an issue does not imply progress. Jeremy i…

I'm sorry, but this is still all based on a misunderstanding. Even without this change, apps still have the ability to use a different theme besides adwaita, and with the change it's still a thing that they have to opt-in to. Asking for a theming API will not change the reality of this, and in fact the discussion there is still all centered around things that are still opt-in for app developers. They get the final say when it comes to their own apps, and if they decide they are going to hard code in adwaita (or some other theme) or use some toolkit that doesn't support themes then then that's the way it is. I would advise not putting so much weight on non-technical rants from twitter, and instead I suggesting focusing on finding ways to help app developers deliver you the best apps that they can.

I don't understand why you are talking about Android and/or Google, there is no GNOME Inc. that is directing development. If you want to know more about how the GNOME community is structured, please consider starting by reading this blog series: https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2021/06/11/community-power-...

>And GNOME/GTK devs get to decide what's the best possible experience for the user — removing any customization possibilities for the sake of consistency. If anyone doesn't like that, they can piss off. This is pretty much what "making someone conform to someone's way" looks like.

Please don't take such a cynical view, if you look at things that way then using anyone else's code would be "conforming to their way" because ultimately that's what it is isn't it? Someone else decides the best way to write that code and then you use what they wrote. Since I don't think you wrote all your software yourself from scratch, there is obviously some level of compromise there that you already acknowledge, so what is the real issue you're having? And I don't mean something vague like "my theme broke" I mean how does it relate to the end goal of what you're trying to change these programs to do?

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#74

Post by lavabiopsy »

_2paq wrote: post #71
lavabiopsy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some situations, changing the font could absolutely considered a hack -- this can break apps in subtle ways by messing with the spacing and sizing of elements, and it gets worse if you designed your app for some specific form factor(s). It's perfectly reasonable for an app developer to say they only support certain fonts. I'm sorry if that's disappointing to hear, but every app developer cannot be expected to test…

> In some situations, changing the font could absolutely considered a hack I'm eagerly waiting for the day when it becomes impossible to make any sort of customisation at all in GNOME/GTK apps besides what the app developer intends. Now that user themes have been axed, I hope fonts, font size, and icons are axed as well and Adwaita, Cantarell (that's the default GNOME font right?), and GNOME Icons are enforced everyw…

That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations. At some point people have to decide if they are going to prioritize on working on new features, or if they want to prioritize allowing people to change the colors and the fonts in ways that could potentially cause bad breakage. Your stance on the subject might be different from others. Since it's all open source, you can of course patch it and modify it all you want to match your priorities, and the developers have no problem with you doing that (and may even encourage it sometimes).

>https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3409

I'm confused why this was posted or why it makes you think that? Apps don't need to match the theme exactly to work, I use some KDE apps with the default theme and they work fine.

>Yeah, I know. It's pointless to have discussions, especially when the project in question isn't a community project and follows the "look but don't touch" open source model of development.

If you want to discuss technical issues to solve that, I'd love to, but I am not interested in engaging you further when you make these type of false and inflammatory statements. Your time is worth a lot more than this, please don't spend it doing these things. My point is that the technical issues have already been discussed repeatedly at length, unless you are actively working on implementing this then it seems extremely unlikely that either of us will have anything new to add. So yes, in that sense it is pointless to have discussions, but it's for the opposite reason that you're saying: the community has already had these discussions and done all the "touching" that needed to be done.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#75

Post by _2paq »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #74
_2paq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some situations, changing the font could absolutely considered a hack I'm eagerly waiting for the day when it becomes impossible to make any sort of customisation at all in GNOME/GTK apps besides what the app developer intends. Now that user themes have been axed, I hope fonts, font size, and icons are axed as well and Adwaita, Cantarell (that's the default GNOME font right?), and GNOME Icons are enforced everyw…

That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations. At some point people have to decide if they are going to prioritize on working on new features, or if they want to prioritize allowing people to change the colors and the fonts in ways that could po…

> That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations.

It's genuinely sad to see that changing fonts is now considered a hack and unsupported behavior on Linux. I'm not into extreme customization or anything of that sort. I don't have any user themes installed besides Adwaita or any icon themes besides Breeze and Adwaita on my Linux desktop running the Sway window manager. But one of the things that I really like is not being forced to use ugly fonts like DejaVu or Segoe. It really is sad to know that soon, some apps on my system will not use the fonts I want them to.

You've asked me not to be cynical but these issues are what drive me to cynicism. I'm not a particular fan of using Linux but I still use it because I'm more uncomfortable with Windows and Mac. But if there's no difference between how they work and how my Linux desktop works, what's even the point? You can't expect users to maintain hard forks or patch and compile stuff.

Thanks for your time though.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#76

Post by lavabiopsy »

_2paq wrote: post #75
lavabiopsy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations. At some point people have to decide if they are going to prioritize on working on new features, or if they want to prioritize allowing people to change the colors and the fonts in ways that could po…

> That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations. It's genuinely sad to see that changing fonts is now considered a hack and unsupported behavior on Linux. I'm not into extreme customization or anything of that sort. I don't have any user themes…

This is not new, GNOME has hidden the font settings as an undocumented setting in the tweak tool for quite some time now. I don't think you should have to be disappointed that it's considered an unsupported hack, if it works for you, that's great, keep on doing it. All "unsupported" means is that the developers don't test with that setup... and how could they? They can't possibly test with every font there is, so marking it unsupported is really only an acknowledgement of the way it already was before. If an app developer says don't theme my app, that's likely because it has a high probability of breaking the app. That's what the letter is talking about and gives examples for. And yes, font changes can break apps.

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong about this but the entire point of Linux and open source seems to be that you can do whatever you want with it, the users don't usually need to end up patching the apps because some other distro will do it (and many of them already seem to), so usually you can find someone else who wants to support it. Also I don't think the internal setting is ever going to get removed from GTK because that it what the themes themselves use to set the font, even if libraries like libadwaita and libgranite want to enforce a certain system theme and font setting, the user still is the one that gets to override the theme.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#77

Post by _2paq »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #76
_2paq wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That has basically already happened on Windows and Mac and for good reason, so it's actually long overdue to happen on Linux. Apps simply cannot be expected to work with an endlessly growing matrix of user customizations. It's genuinely sad to see that changing fonts is now considered a hack and unsupported behavior on Linux. I'm not into extreme customization or anything of that sort. I don't have any user themes…

This is not new, GNOME has hidden the font settings as an undocumented setting in the tweak tool for quite some time now. I don't think you should have to be disappointed that it's considered an unsupported hack, if it works for you, that's great, keep on doing it. All "unsupported" means is that the developers don't test with that setup... and how could they? They can't possibly test with every font there is, so mar…

> Also, forgive me if I'm wrong about this but the entire point of Linux and open source seems to be that you can do whatever you want with it, the users don't usually need to end up patching the apps because some other distro will do it (and many of them already seem to), so usually you can find someone else who wants to support it.

What do you think will happen when developers who've built their apps using GTK3 start migrating their apps to GTK4? They'll most likely pick libadwaita like the developer of GTkeddit did. He wasn't aware about how libadwaita is going to enforce its own theme and was surprised when I told him about it.

Now, I know I'll never use his app because it's using libadwaita but what if apps like Firefox start using GTK4 with libadwaita? What do I do then? Switch to Chromium? It uses GTK as well. The so-called choice that open source offers is merely an illusion in some cases.

The choices that GNOME devs make end up hurting users like me who want nothing do with GNOME and who aren't even using GNOME.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#78

Post by lavabiopsy »

_2paq wrote: post #77
lavabiopsy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not new, GNOME has hidden the font settings as an undocumented setting in the tweak tool for quite some time now. I don't think you should have to be disappointed that it's considered an unsupported hack, if it works for you, that's great, keep on doing it. All "unsupported" means is that the developers don't test with that setup... and how could they? They can't possibly test with every font there is, so mar…

> Also, forgive me if I'm wrong about this but the entire point of Linux and open source seems to be that you can do whatever you want with it, the users don't usually need to end up patching the apps because some other distro will do it (and many of them already seem to), so usually you can find someone else who wants to support it. What do you think will happen when developers who've built their apps using GTK3 sta…

I don't understand why you're saying that hurts you, that doesn't make sense. If that developer wanted to add support for themes on top of libadwaita they could easily do that, GNOME is not preventing anyone from doing that. Also, what you have told the GTkeddit developer was very likely not correct, users can still load their own theme and libadwaita will not override that. The libadwaita change is about the platform theme, not the user's theme, the user theme still has top priority. I would suggest to correct your statement to that developer before they make an uninformed decision.

But that also leads to another point: libadwaita is intended to be a library that implements the GNOME HIG. If you are using libadwaita apps, that means you are using an app that is intended for GNOME -- so if you "want nothing to do with GNOME" then I don't understand why you would be intentionally using their apps and then complaining that they don't act right with a non-GNOME desktop. A developer who chooses to use that is intentionally choosing to go with the GNOME platform, and there is no reason to be upset about that -- it's not a decision that you have to worry about if you just want to ignore GNOME apps.

Also I think you have a misunderstanding of how Firefox is built, they are a cross platform app, they are not going to use libadwaita. They already have their own theme system too and have for quite some time: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/

I would advise to do more research before making assumptions about these things, if you have questions you'd like to ask then those are a better way to start rather than jumping to the worst possible conclusion. Please try to be careful about online misinformation.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#79

Post by _2paq »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #78
_2paq wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, forgive me if I'm wrong about this but the entire point of Linux and open source seems to be that you can do whatever you want with it, the users don't usually need to end up patching the apps because some other distro will do it (and many of them already seem to), so usually you can find someone else who wants to support it. What do you think will happen when developers who've built their apps using GTK3 sta…

I don't understand why you're saying that hurts you, that doesn't make sense. If that developer wanted to add support for themes on top of libadwaita they could easily do that, GNOME is not preventing anyone from doing that. Also, what you have told the GTkeddit developer was very likely not correct, users can still load their own theme and libadwaita will not override that. The libadwaita change is about the platfor…

> Also, what you have told the GTkeddit developer was very likely not correct, users can still load their own theme and libadwaita will not override that. The libadwaita change is about the platform theme, not the user's theme, the user theme still has top priority.

Haven't Clasen and several other devs on the issue tracker you and I linked above clearly has statements like "linking to libadwaita is an explicit decision to use the Adwaita theme" and "core GNOME applications linking to libadwaita will then thereby require that every distribution shipping GNOME is forced to consent to having Adwaita as the theme".

The only way a user's own custom theme will be used if a proposed opt-in flag is added to libadwaita (doesn't seem like it will be, recoloring API is being favored) and app developers use that flag.

Correct me if I'm wrong in this point and I'd be happy to go back and talk to the GTkeddit developer again but from what he independently tested, he seems to have reached the same result as I think.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#80

Post by lavabiopsy »

_2paq wrote: post #79
lavabiopsy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're saying that hurts you, that doesn't make sense. If that developer wanted to add support for themes on top of libadwaita they could easily do that, GNOME is not preventing anyone from doing that. Also, what you have told the GTkeddit developer was very likely not correct, users can still load their own theme and libadwaita will not override that. The libadwaita change is about the platfor…

> Also, what you have told the GTkeddit developer was very likely not correct, users can still load their own theme and libadwaita will not override that. The libadwaita change is about the platform theme, not the user's theme, the user theme still has top priority. Haven't Clasen and several other devs on the issue tracker you and I linked above clearly has statements like "linking to libadwaita is an explicit decis…

>linking to libadwaita is an explicit decision to use the Adwaita theme

Yes, linking to Adwaita is a decision to use Adwaita theme by default, because the widgets in it are intentionally designed to work well with only with those specific colors, spacings, fonts, etc. But the app developer can override that afterwards if they have additional CSS.

>every distribution shipping GNOME is forced to consent to having Adwaita as the theme

Can you show where this quote came from? This makes no sense and I do not understand why someone would say this at all, any distribution shipping GNOME is free to modify the Adwaita theme or ship another theme, as Ubuntu is already doing for some time. GNOME developers may grumble about it and write more letters like this but they cannot stop them from doing that, no one is "forced to consent" to anything as this is all open source code. If you notice from the letter, the concern is actually the opposite, it's about about downstream forcing their untested themes on some GNOME apps without concern for the app developer, which is resulting in bugs and unhappy users.

>The only way a user's own custom theme will be used if a proposed opt-in flag is added to libadwaita

No, this is incorrect. The opt-in flag is about the platform theme. The change in libadwaita does not affect the user's theme. User's theme still has top priority over all other CSS, this is documented: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.CssProvider.html

And you can in fact verify that it works if you have the latest libadwaita from git master.

I would like to again emphasize that even if this weren't the case, the code is open source and it would still be quite trivial to comment out some lines and install your own CSS, and that is the worst case scenario. So realistically there is little reason for alarm.

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