Ubuntu's Yaru Desktop Theme Seeing Updates - Big Update Against GTK's Latest Adwaita

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu's Yaru Desktop Theme Seeing Updates - Big Update Against GTK's Latest Adwaita

Canonical's designers have been working to update their Yaru desktop theme ahead of the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" release...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-19.10-Yaru-Updates

[Britoid]

This is still going to cause breakage in applications simply because of how GTK does styling and custom widgets. There's no "sane" theming API.

If I create a widget on a headerbar that's black, under GTK without any theme, this is fine because the header is light-grey. If I now apply Yaru, that widget is now now broken. Even if I made light and dark variants, I still couldn't fix it because Yaru is stupid and applies a dark headerbar to everything even when GTK thinks the theme is a light theme.

I can now either put theme specific fixes in my application (but I can't do that for every theme), ignore it and let people think the app is broken or force Adwaita (which hurts people who like to tinker).

I work on some GTK applications and I'm now considering blacklisting distro themes to try and get a compromise.

[horizonbrave]

who's bad?

[Britoid]

Britoid ”sane” APIs would be yet another restriction. And it would come with a maintenance cost.

Yaru went too far. Now they toned it down and helped upstream some work. A win for all.

A 'sane' theme API whilst would help theme developers, would hurt app developers (you're basically restricting what they can do). App developers are the bread and butter of any platform.

I would actually be up for some kind of GTK setting where a vendor can set a "vendor theme" (Android has a vendor theme), that apps can opt into or out of, that's independent of the "gtk theme" setting, which would let tinkerers be able to do what they do.

I don't think any consumer operating system with widespread usage has official theme support (for apps). You'll notice how Windows restricted to loading just-signed themes and now that's pretty much gone. macOS and Windows both have accent colours, which vendors and users can set, which apps can opt into using.

[lb90]

If I create a widget on a headerbar that's black, under GTK without any theme, this is fine because the header is light-grey. If I now apply Yaru, that widget is now now broken. Even if I made light and dark variants, I still couldn't fix it because Yaru is stupid and applies a dark headerbar to everything even when GTK thinks the theme is a light theme.

For custom widgets I reuse the styling of other widgets. For example I can paint the background of my custom widget as the background of a button with .osd class. You use the gtk_render functions for that. See the "Foreign Drawing" example in gtk3-demo.

[Britoid]

Britoid Or maybe just accept theming is a powerfull drug you should steer clear of?

I love theming I don't like the bug reports.

[uid313]

I can highly recommend Arc theme, it is very beautiful.

[bison]

I can highly recommend Arc theme, it is very beautiful.

Why is Arc-Darker *lighter* than Arc-Dark, do you know?

[mroche]

Britoid Or maybe just accept theming is a powerfull drug you should steer clear of?

I made a switch this summer to just going as stock GNOME as possible just to try it out. With the exception of about 2 or 3 extensions (D2D, Better Audio), I’m going to be honest, it’s quite nice. I’ve gotten used to Adwaita and Adwaita Dark and don’t really have a problem or see a need to switch back to Adapta/Paper-Icons as I was using on my workstation previously.

Sometimes trying things out as the developers intended and fighting the urge to change everything can give you a new perspective on things. As someone working in the CG Industry, I’ve gotten quite used to the “app developer” way, particularly when it comes to theming. Virtually all of the tools we use are Qt based and have their own internal theme that makes that applications usage consistent across all platforms it supports. Examples: Maya, Houdini, Max, Mari, Nuke, Substance, etc.

Cheers,
Mike

[DanL]

gtk3 themes have long been a sore spot for me. I hope something comes out of this that can benefit xfce, MATE, etc.