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>This isn't true though Actually it is. That generator is only changing the equivalent of accent color. The libadwaita recoloring is the whole app. You will ru
by throwaway82652 5y ago
>This isn't true though
Actually it is. That generator is only changing the equivalent of accent color. The libadwaita recoloring is the whole app. You will run into issues if you try to recolor everything in GTK3 that way. Yes you could technically rewrite the whole GTK3 stylesheet and recolor it that way, and lots of theme authors have done that, but at that point it's no different from what libadwaita does.
- smoldesu 5y ago> but at that point it's no different from what libadwaita does. So... we're just conceding that the feature you outlined isn't new, just a different way of getting an outcome that could already be achieved with older versions?
- throwaway82652 5y ago>So... we're just conceding that the feature you outlined isn't new No, it could not be done in older versions unless you made all apps base their design around that stylesheet, which nobody actually did because it would break a lot of older apps. They didn't bother to do it until GTK4 because it requires changing the stylesheet anyway and apps have to actively migrate to it, so it's the perfect time to get this out of the way. If you're referring to individual apps, yes they could always technically implement their own theming system, just like they could always implement their own toolkit from scratch if they really wanted to. The point now is it's built into the platform and will actually have a shot at being usable in every app using libadwaita, not just ones that decide to ship a third party stylesheet because they decided they want to support ubuntu or budgie or something.
- smoldesu 5y agoThis isn't even an argument. GTK3 had custom CSS supported alongside custom stylesheets. I hate to be reductive, but you're making things up here. I have built applications like this with my own two hands, it's really nothing new.
- throwaway82652 5y ago>GTK3 had custom CSS supported alongside custom stylesheets. Which again nobody actually relied on because it broke everything. I didn't make this up, this is exactly why things changed in GTK4. You can still do that in GTK4 by the way, and it's still just as bad an idea as it was before and it will stop the app from looking native. I have also built applications that way and I don't recommend it. But I don't actually understand your aversion to having a platform theme if you care about having "native apps". That's the whole point of a native app, it's supposed to use the platform theme and follow the platform HIG, and that means no custom stylesheets. There's no other definition of a native app that I'm aware of. I see constant criticism on Hacker News towards web apps and Electron apps specifically because they don't use a native platform theme and instead every app has a custom stylesheet because that's what you do when you make web apps.
- smoldesu 5y ago> But I don't actually understand your aversion to having a platform theme if you care about having "native apps". That's the whole point of a native app No, it really isn't. There are plenty of MacOS apps that follow the Mac HIG, but still suck completely because they rely on Electron for their backend. The "point" of a native app is that, well, it runs natively. There is no non-native runtime. You can't make this argument because we've had our cake and ate it too for the past 20 years on GTK, it just sounds to me like you didn't like the old way of doing things and now you're trying to defend the new way as if it's a fact or a law. Both are two opinionated ways of building native apps, each with their own ups and downs. This is why I say we're at an impasse: I value flexibility over conformity, and you value stability over accessibility. That's fine, but it's pointless for you to push these arguments when, as we've shown, the features you outline already existed in past versions. Yes they broke everything. You know what else breaks everything? GTK4's text rendering. Libadwaita on any system that isn't a GNOME one. Wayland on everything except highly specific hardware and software combinations. You're welcome to your opinion. I just think it's wrong, and that's why I'm continuing to outline it here. You're also welcome to argue against my opinion, but unless you actually address my complaints you're not going to walk away "the winner" here.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago>That generator is only changing the equivalent of accent color. You probably only saw the first few ones. In later ones you can see it changes more than just the accent color.
- throwaway82652 5y agoNo, I looked all the way to the bottom. That's just adwaita dark with the accent color changed. And I suppose the GTK2 themes (not the GTK3 ones) are tinted? That's still not the same as what recoloring is. Some of the colors in that are also visibly wrong even in those screenshots, like the selected menu and the disabled text and the icons. But I don't think you can expect much from GTK2 themes these days. That script is also fairly ridiculous to me, it's a shell script that is literally copying the CSS wholesale and running sed on them. So again that's rewriting the whole CSS file and expecting the app to use that stylesheet, it's not the same as doing a dynamic recoloring at runtime.