Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy • Hacker News Board

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#11

Post by tadfisher » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

TingPing wrote: post #10

pengaru wrote: post #5

The writing's been on the wall for ages on this one... GTK+ theming was never particularly stable and I get the impression the developers are tired of dealing with avoiding breakages or the fallout when they inevitably occur. It's easier to just outright drop support for it. But it's unclear to me to what extent theming will actually be impossible. I presume the GTK+ look and feel will still be stylized more or less…

GTK has a stable theme api. This is happening in a different layer, which is more specific to GNOME apps.

GTK has stylesheets, not an API. This is why libadwaita is the "GNOME apps" API, because GTK's themes are stylesheets and in no way form a proper API that preserves accessibility and usability for random GTK apps with custom controls.

The solution is an actual theming API, which is still in the discussion phase, and an interim recoloring API for distributions who mostly fork Adwaita but use branded theme colors.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#12

Post by TingPing » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #11

TingPing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTK has a stable theme api. This is happening in a different layer, which is more specific to GNOME apps.

GTK has stylesheets, not an API. This is why libadwaita is the "GNOME apps" API, because GTK's themes are stylesheets and in no way form a proper API that preserves accessibility and usability for random GTK apps with custom controls. The solution is an actual theming API, which is still in the discussion phase, and an interim recoloring API for distributions who mostly fork Adwaita but use branded theme colors.

This is weird semantics. GTK supports themes. The CSS classes are stable and will not change. Only libadwaita disables loading system themes.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#13

Post by TheCycoONE » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Does QT have some sort of issues with free software licenses? I wonder why QT hasn’t been used as widely as GTK. Maybe I’m mixing up GTK with Gnome?

Some of the free software community have long been suspicious of QT. Their recent decision to only provide closed LTS releases seems to justify that. Unless a community with more resources than KDE and less conflicting financial motivation than The QT Company takes it on. I'm sure there are also technical reasons. It's a c++ framework that doesn't bind as well to other languages as GTK.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#14

Post by winrid » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

MR4D wrote: post #7

Ok, everyone, time to go back to Enlightenment and try this again. https://www.enlightenment.org/ss/?page=2

Remember the time you could get a machine with this desktop/window manager at Walmart in the US? Good times.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#15

Post by mattst88 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Does QT have some sort of issues with free software licenses? I wonder why QT hasn’t been used as widely as GTK. Maybe I’m mixing up GTK with Gnome?

Yes, although Qt is licensed under both the (L)GPL and a commercial license, The Qt Company does things such as making the current v5.15 LTS branch commercial-only when v6.0 was released. See https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/qt_lts_goes_commercia...

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#16

Post by malmz » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:30 AM UTC

vondur wrote: post #4

Does QT have some sort of issues with free software licenses? I wonder why QT hasn’t been used as widely as GTK. Maybe I’m mixing up GTK with Gnome?

People always talk about the license and stuff but personally, i always shy away from Qt because the only real choice for language is C++ and maybe python. Gtk being written in C gives it much more flexibility in what languages can bind to it.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#17

Post by esarbe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

This might be relevant:

In 2019 at Guadec there was a meeting between interested parties with regards to theming.[0] This was the meeting where the current direction of Gnome theming was decided on[1][2]. System76 was obviously (see[0]) a participating party at that meeting.

At that meeting it was decided that everyone at the meeting should contribute to the theming api. System76 at the time announced that they

"First, we’ll work together to identify and document colors that can be exported and modified by theme developers. These include header bars, buttons, switches and other widgets that theme developers often modify. This work also enables app developers to more easily customize the look and feel of their apps."

Elementary and the Gnome developers took over the Dark mode api. Which has been implemented and delivered. It would have been Budgie, Ubuntu and System76's job to get together, write a specification of what they need and then work on a proposal of how they want to achieve that. They didn't do that in the last two years and now they are complaining that Gnome didn't do the job they (Budgie, System76, Ubuntu) agreed to do.

I know, hating on Gnome is easy sometimes. But that really doesn't look like the Gnome devs are at fault. They communicated their intents and reasons years and years ago[3]. This should not been a surprise and complaining loudly about this now - to say the last - a bit dishonest with regards to their initial involvement.

There's still work with regards to a theming API by Purism's Alexander Mikhayelenko, but that work is ongoing[4].

[0] https://blog.system76.com/post/187541504063/the-future-of-th...

[1] https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gtk-adwaita-and-vendor-styles/...

[2] https://etherpad.gnome.org/p/VendorThemes2019/timeslider#161...

[3] https://stopthemingmy.app/

[4] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/215

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#18

Post by esarbe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

rektide wrote: post #2

android is just getting the ability to let users pick their colors & here's a bunch of appdeves irked that they cant override the user's ability to pick colors on linux. i for one really really liked when i could make a nice theme, a look & feel for my computer. that was a cool time. i dont know what the third way is. letting apps express power over the users sounds bad. wider fommunity here sounds like cantankerous…

Yes, indeed. That's the idea behind libadwaita; if you are using it, you are buying into Gnome theming. If you don't want Gnome theming, don't use libadwaita. You can still use and theme Gtk all you want, but libadwaita will disable loading of themes.

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#19

Post by TheMatten » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #17

This might be relevant: In 2019 at Guadec there was a meeting between interested parties with regards to theming.[0] This was the meeting where the current direction of Gnome theming was decided on[1][2]. System76 was obviously (see[0]) a participating party at that meeting. At that meeting it was decided that everyone at the meeting should contribute to the theming api. System76 at the time announced that they "Firs…

Might be relevant too related to elementary OS: https://old.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/pm22kw/whats_...

Re: Gnome to prevent theming, wider community not happy

#20

Post by nix23 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

Linus would call that a Bug.