Please don’t theme our apps • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#71

Post by grandinj » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

frenchy wrote: post #51

grandinj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Themeing is not a valid or supported feature. It's a hack that uses some facilities in GTK that were not intended for that purpose.

Really? Do you have a source for that? Theming GTK has been a not uncommon thing since as long as I've been using it (~15 years).

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-a...

Oh yes, people have always done it, via one hack or another, and as long as it was more of a "for people who really want to fiddle" it wasn't that much of an issue.

But now expectations have risen, people expect more solid behaviour and look/feel from their apps, and distros routinely have quite different GTK themes.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#72

Post by grandinj » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #49

grandinj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Themeing is not a valid or supported feature. It's a hack that uses some facilities in GTK that were not intended for that purpose.

That was the case in the early days of GTK3, but I don't think it is anymore. If GTK3 still does not support theming, that explains why theming causes issues. In which case it would be better to implement proper theming support because stopping distributions from theming clearly doesn't work.

A "proper" themeing API is a massive undertaking and would still have issues at scale

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#73

Post by ricardobeat » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #7

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…

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.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#74

Post by Legogris » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

781 wrote: post #64

Legogris wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why the Electron-haters are downvoting you, but you're completely right. Don't build your apps in GTK if you don't want to have overridden GTK configurations affect your UI. I would really like Electron to add an on-by-default standard interface to override CSS rules for Electron apps, though. (I don't have a horse in the Electron-is-great-or-crap race)

> I would really Electron to add an on-by-default standard interface to override CSS rules for Electron apps That's a hard problem to solve, since there are many ways of styling Electron - Bootstrap/Bulma/Material Design/custom stuff. So it's hard to just override CSS rules. On the other hand, it's the kind of problem perfectly suited for Machine Learning - just take the whole screenshot/image of the app and use a st…

The exact same argument could be made for web apps, but we still have userChrome.css and userContent.css which solves this neatly.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#75

Post by anoncake » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

faissaloo wrote: post #65

On the contrary, I think GNOME allows people too much freedom to theme and it opens the system up to really broken theming. One of the things I love about Serenity OS is that it has one simple theming engine so everything looks the way you'd expect between applications.

> On the contrary, I think GNOME allows people too much freedom

Freedom is kind of the point of free software.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#76

Post by Legogris » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #69

Legogris wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why the Electron-haters are downvoting you, but you're completely right. Don't build your apps in GTK if you don't want to have overridden GTK configurations affect your UI. I would really like Electron to add an on-by-default standard interface to override CSS rules for Electron apps, though. (I don't have a horse in the Electron-is-great-or-crap race)

This is about free software. If a distribution insists on theming your Electron app, it can do so.

Sure. Even if I disagree with the letter, no one has asked for disallowing distros to do anything - it's more of a plea than a demand.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#77

Post by pushpop » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #43

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…

It's not so egocentric if you factor in the fashion aspect. Not everybody wears the same matching clothes. Then more crucial aspects of ability - such as eyesight being a major one. Some people can't see some colours that well, some need larger fonts. Things like that in which theme's are the saviour and for many a developer - how they cater for disability usage. Sure some theme's can break the UI, but to blame the u…

The letter is about distributions not end users. It says end users are allowed to do as they wish. So that accessibility concern is covered.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#78

Post by 781 » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #74

781 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would really Electron to add an on-by-default standard interface to override CSS rules for Electron apps That's a hard problem to solve, since there are many ways of styling Electron - Bootstrap/Bulma/Material Design/custom stuff. So it's hard to just override CSS rules. On the other hand, it's the kind of problem perfectly suited for Machine Learning - just take the whole screenshot/image of the app and use a st…

The exact same argument could be made for web apps, but we still have userChrome.css and userContent.css which solves this neatly.

How many are actually using that? I don't know anybody.

https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-...

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#79

Post by oarsinsync » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

allover wrote: post #34

anoncake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how many times would they have to tell the end user who opened an issue on their app's tracker that? I'm afraid there is no way around that issue with free software.

In this case the author is suggesting a way to avoid it, for distributions to not theme and introduce the bugs in the first place.

for distributions to not theme all third party applications by default, and for that to be a per-app user toggle.

Re: Please don’t theme our apps

#80

Post by detaro » Sat, May 25, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #63

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…

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…

It EXPLICITLY says that it does not talk about users changing things on their machines, but wants it to be something the user sets instead of a distro applying by default.