GNOME's Platform Design Continues Evolving From Dark Mode To Toasts

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME's Platform Design Continues Evolving From Dark Mode To Toasts

GNOME developer Allan Day has provided an update on behalf of the GNOME design time around some of their recent platform design improvements and some of the changes they are talking about in the near future...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Platform-Design-EO2021

[RahulSundaram]

libadwaita? What? Does this mean no more theming in GNOME? :<

If so then when somebody finds the default theme ugly, he/she will have to hack the source code and use a franken-GNOME....

That's a lot of bad assumptions a quick search would have provided better clarity on. You can start with

https://aplazas.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/blog/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwaita.html

[birdie]

Michael didn't run a story on this but it's worth the read: https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/...ive-ecosystem/

Gnome devs have basically destroyed theming for anyone who's not a good C programmer.

[Ironmask]

An updated "About" window design is being worked on.

Okay, now you have my interest

[blacknova]

Michael didn't run a story on this but it's worth the read: https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/...ive-ecosystem/

Gnome devs have basically destroyed theming for anyone who's not a good C programmer.

Limited theming is not actually that bad - better to have sane default themes, than a lot of installable eye tearing ones (and that is a lot). Most dark themes are broken in one place or another. If default light and dark themes are good for most people it would be enough to just change color highlights.

[furtadopires]

This is one of those topics that I think it should have a real time debate with professional for and against it. reading about it and I found out that both sides have good points, so I think this is more a question of how to do it "correctly"

A debate between Gnome devs vs Custom Gnome devs (not just gitlab / twitter posts) would probably settle this.

[You-]

Michael didn't run a story on this but it's worth the read: https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/...ive-ecosystem/

Gnome devs have basically destroyed theming for anyone who's not a good C programmer.

IMO that is actually a surprisingly ignorant take by someone who leads the efforts to make a major DE and distribution.

I am not a proper programmer but I follow a lot of developer discussions and so far it seems everyone find gtk4 much easier to use that gtk3 and earlier - there is early frustration sometimes where the change in focus is not fully understood and the developers have attempted the old way.

An example of this is the complaints about subclassing in that blog. In GTK4 subclassing is less important as making your own widgets has been made easier. however if you want to subclass like before instead of composing your own widget, there will be frustrations due to the changes made to the underlying platform.

He wants both a GTK that isnt limited to gnome, but at the same time he does not want a platform library that separates the components that are specific to gnome.

His distro is also the one that has frozen many gnome apps to ancient released because he takes issue with the name and origins of libhandy. The links trying to discuss this with Solus developers are hilarious for the wrong reasons. A developer even got banned for life for trying to explain the need to allow libhandy to be used by apps that choose to do so.

I will ignore the previous lead's previous plan to migrate to Qt, which has failed. The current lead's major frustration is that he wants to be just a consumer of GTK without being involved and then is frustrated that not all decisions made by others are what he would make.

I look forward to see how far they get with their new EFL based foundation.

[birdie]

Limited theming is not actually that bad - better to have sane default themes, than a lot of installable eye tearing ones (and that is a lot). Most dark themes are broken in one place or another. If default light and dark themes are good for most people it would be enough to just change color highlights.

"We are unable to come up with a good theming support/API, so let's remove the old CSS based theming altogether and make it inaccessible for most people out there".

FTFY.

[birdie]

IMO that is actually a surprisingly ignorant take by someone who leads the efforts to make a major DE and distribution.

I am not a proper programmer but I follow a lot of developer discussions and so far it seems everyone find gtk4 much easier to use that gtk3 and earlier - there is early frustration sometimes where the change in focus is not fully understood and the developers have attempted the old way.

An example of this is the complaints about subclassing in that blog. In GTK4 subclassing is less important as making your own widgets has been made easier. however if you want to subclass like before instead of composing your own widget, there will be frustrations due to the changes made to the underlying platform.

He wants both a GTK that isnt limited to gnome, but at the same time he does not want a platform library that separates the components that are specific to gnome.

His distro is also the one that has frozen many gnome apps to ancient released because he takes issue with the name and origins of libhandy. The links trying to discuss this with Solus developers are hilarious for the wrong reasons. A developer even got banned for life for trying to explain the need to allow libhandy to be used by apps that choose to do so.

I will ignore the previous lead's previous plan to migrate to Qt, which has failed. The current lead's major frustration is that he wants to be just a consumer of GTK without being involved and then is frustrated that not all decisions made by others are what he would make.

I look forward to see how far they get with their new EFL based foundation.

I was under the impression that GTK was a multiplatform library not bound to Gnome and not requiring independent developers to cater to it but it looks like I was wrong and GTK has become purely a Gnome library for Gnome development. No wonder more and more projects are choosing Qt which is not bound to a particular (mostly) Linux (mostly sponsored and developed by RedHat employees) desktop environment which is currently trying to migrate to Wayland and is obsessed with making UI touch friendly at the expense of usability for PC users.

I only have one question: which one of them, GTK or Qt is truly free. Looks like neither, only once you buy a commercial license for Qt it actually makes a lot more sense.

[blacknova]

"We are unable to come up with a good theming support/API, so let's remove the old CSS based theming altogether and make it inaccessible for most people out there".

FTFY.

Unable or unwilling? There is difference. And GNOME devs are unwilling. Current theme engine would not exist if they'd been unable.