7 ms·

Please don’t theme our apps

43 points by fsflover 3y ago

aftbit 3y ago
Make sure your app has a good native dark mode and I won't theme anything.
- stalfosknight 3y ago
  Yes, exactly this. I'm on macOS but 99% of the time I feel the need to mess around with the appearance of a website or application or something it's because it is blindingly bright white instead of reading the room (or my dark mode setting, as it were).
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  A black theme. Black. Not dark gray, not slightly teal, black. Flat, everything, solid black but interactive elements and text. I used an app on my phone recently that had an AMOLED option, clearly labelled AMOLED, that was gray. These people are crazy.
Zambyte 3y ago
Issue I opened explaining why this doesn't make any sense (2020): https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue... The responses from GNOME members were quite enlightening. Really shows the level of respect they have for anyone besides the in club.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    There are quite a few other GNOME devs that have signed the letter, and presumably share the same sentiment.
    - sumtechguy 3y ago
      That will be an issue they will need to deal with because of the license they chose. They picked GPL (https://help.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/license.html.en https://help.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/license.html.en) that means as long as the intermediary ships their changes too then all is good. They are basically asking to be the only fork of their code. I get it, they have spent tons of time getting it 'just right'. They may find that a hard sell to some integrators who make it a point to put their own spin on their distro. This is basically a 'do not fork our code' ask.
      - shkkmo 3y ago
        It's more of a "don't fork, modify and distribute our code without QAing those changes and proving your own support."
        sumtechguy 3y ago
        I get the idea. But the GPL allows for this? They would need a different license to get that? Pretty sure GPL is 'we may or may not give support if we feel like it' sort of license. The only real obligation is to provide the code including any changes you make.
        shkkmo 3y ago
        This letter isn't a legal demand, this is a request to people who are interested in the health of the ecosystem and community. The way similar sorts of issues are often enforced legally is by using trademarks so that if someone forks your project, they have to be clear that it is separate. In this case, it isn't a fork and it's hard to see how those tools would apply but the underlying issue of user confusion and brand harm are still similar.
        sumtechguy 3y ago
        Oh I get that. But what many do not realize when they give the work away like in the GPL you also give away control. They have given away control but now are asking for it back. That is up to the distros if they want to do that. They are perfectly allowed to do so. But they are perfectly allowed to not do so. This is one of the 'downsides' to open source. People may use your source in a way you do not like. I have this same conversation every few years with people on the net. It is usually about the time they realize people are not giving stuff back up stream (their intent) but realty is GPL does not require that. It basically is for a better term a fork. A small fork but a fork non the less. There are changes they are distributed downstream, but the rub is not back upstream. In this particular case people are going thru the trouble of making a theme pack that is kind of unfinished. But not finishing the work and not upstreaming it either for whatever reason. Hence the letter. But strongly worded letters do not always get things done. Maybe it will but I doubt it. The distros forked because the upstream was not doing what they needed. So the distro managers did it. But now they are asking 'just ignore that part of the GPL that says you can modify the code'. This is basically a missing feature of the upstream so downstream is adding it in. I see both sides I really do. But if you give away code do not always expect it to be used in the way you expect.
  - lexicality 3y ago
    Searching "mikhaylenko gnome" gives you Alice's former name and past contributions.
- dxbednarczyk 3y ago
  > They're like an arrogant chef who, after cooking your dinner, instructs the waiter to remove all the salt and pepper shakers from the table because they don't want you changing the flavor of their dish. [1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15#issuecomment-962569563 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    And just before that > Just because something is technically possible and not illegal doesn't mean it's not a dick move [1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15#issuecomment-648456147 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
  - d_tr 3y ago
    They are more like a chef who asks the waiters to not add salt or pepper to the dish before serving it to customers, because the customers will blame the chef then. If the customer adds a ton of salt, then it's clearly their fault and the chef says he is fine with that. Sounds reasonable to me.
- vinceguidry 3y ago
  C'mon. You are telling people that build and maintain core infrastructure used on millions of Linux installations all around the world that they are fundamentally misunderstanding Linux. This is why I don't maintain free software, and God bless those who do.
  - apetresc 3y ago
    If you look at the signees (especially the two or three that actually seem the most invested in this message, and responded to the discussion thread linked above), you will see that these are not the people building "core infrastructure" used by "millions". It's a random grab-bag of default Gnome applications, the kind most Linux users who are aware of alternatives immediately remove from distributions that ship it. "Random Gnome developers" as a group have been notorious for decades for not really gelling with the wider Linux ecosystem. Looking at the project maintained by the front-runner of this movement, it has had 5 total reported issues in the last year, none of which are related to theming, so I'm not sure I understand what the big support struggle they're chafing at is either.
    - vinceguidry 3y ago
      > It's a random grab-bag of default Gnome applications, Default applications! On one of the two major desktop frameworks in Linux! Oh I'm sure what you're working on is so much more important.
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    Do you actually disagree with any of the points I made? Or just the fact that I made those points to people who supposedly have positions of authority?
    - vinceguidry 3y ago
      Yes, I do. But it's clear the words would be wasted when the perspectives are that far apart.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, ui consistency is a thing, and everyone making up their own paradigm is not great. (And the linux desktop is already highly inconsistent as is). But I think we passed that station a long time ago. On the third hand, if you do have themability, it ought to not break apps that are thus themable. I'm not sure if that's an app problem or a gnome problem or a both problem here. In the main "please don't theme our app" might be the wrong approach though. It somehow seems to go against the spirit of open-sourceness. Not saying the issue is with the upstream dev per-se, but something is definitely going wrong here.
nerdjon 3y ago
I have some conflicted feelings on this, I feel like this should be controllable as a user and not blockable by developers. My single biggest pet pieve with my iPhone is when a developer (Google is a big offender) decides that instead of sticking with native design language they are just going to steamroll their own design language onto a device it wasn't meant for. I feel like consistency goes a long way towards a better computing device.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  Then you agree with this letter. It is calling put a specific issue and currently the only way to fix it would be to take away user theming by hard coding a stylesheet. Since that removal of user choice is antithetical to these developers, they are looking for better solutions. One solution is asking distributors to not apply themes to apps by default without doing QA on those apps. The other solution is to provide apps a way to opt out of system default themes without those apps having to remove user choice by hard coding the stylesheet.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    There is a third option and to me is likely the better option. The themes are applied by default but there is somewhere to easily disable it on a a per app basis by the user and not by the app developer. This makes it so some consistency is the default option but if something breaks then you can disable it. Maybe throw in some user education if you are really worried about this. Edit: Also to be clear I don't really agree with the article. I understand some of the points it makes but considering downloading an app and it having a different UI is a frustration for me I would be very happy if on my iPhone I could somehow overwrite parts of that UI. (Ultimately right now I just uninstall it)
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      I think the UX of requiring users to opt out of untested and likely broken themes on a per app basis is bad. I think an opt-in via prompt on first run (or whatever) is a better experience since it makes the distinction clear in case stuff breaks and provides an opportunity to warn users about potential breakage.
mcluck 3y ago
I use Linux because I like tweaking my system and that includes theming. I agree that people shouldn't report bugs if their custom theme makes an app goofy or broken but to suggest that people and distros should not use custom themes is ridiculous
- wrsh07 3y ago
  Imo you and the author of the article seem to agree You're not recommending blanket tweaks for all users and are savvy enough to remove the theme (or fix it) if it's breaking an app you want to use before reporting issues My impression of the article is a request against generic re theming. I suspect there's a better path forwards though. Eg distros could make their themes more modular (relocation of UI elements, changing colors, changing icons - maybe this already happens!) and then make it easy to toggle these when opening a new app (just like the OS gives you a minute to decide if your monitor display settings tweaks broke something for you)
barnabee 3y ago
Completely antithetical to free software. If I want to modify your code or the environment it runs in, I will. Gnome is not an OS or a "platform", it is free (as in freedom!) software to be used and tied together however the users, distro authors, ansd whoever else feels like. Writing and publishing open source software then trying to guilt trip people into interacting with it at arms length and subject to condiions like closed source, proprietary software is nuts. I honestly couldn't care less if all these people quit writing software tomorrow, if the alternative is this nonsense.
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  Clarification here: they are asking you to not, and warning that you're getting into "unsupported territory".
  - Longhanks 3y ago
    Unless both parties signed a contract, there is no "supported territory". The GPL clearly states that there needs not even be a particular purpose.
    - lacksconfidence 3y ago
      And yet, open source software lives and dies on support. Projects that are perceived as having unresponsive upstreams that don't support the project are often in a death spiral.
    - brodouevencode 3y ago
      Fair. I think what they mean by supported though is (in a very simple example) if you complain about a missing button but it's because your DE theme washes it out then they aren't going to help, otherwise they'd look at the issue and try to resolve it. I think this is reasonable. Sure there's no awareness, consideration, capacity and all that but a reasonable attempt at support.
    - tylerhou 3y ago
      I think "unsupported" here clearly does not mean a legal obligation to support, but rather "support" in the sense that in the free software community, it is convention for developers to provide help to (nonpaying) users, and that convention should not apply if users make certain changes to the software.
rendaw 3y ago
The linked article has some more critical information. It sounds like GTK doesn't support themes (i.e. structured styling with mechanically enforced boundaries, guidelines, etc), and some people are using custom CSS overrides to emulate it. But this means literally anything could change, and app developers can't really defend about it, so apps break. IMO I'd petition for GTK to support safe theming, and maybe build up what themes can do in a controlled manner over time, rather than just tell everyone to stop with the CSS. But maybe it's a foregone conclusion that GTK devs won't do this. I'm sympathetic to users. I don't think devs have the right to force branding on users and there are good accessibility reasons to want themes, but its also reasonable for devs to want their software to not look like crap out of the box and there are carefully hand crafted UIs for specific uses that will never fit a theming standard.
- chriswarbo 3y ago
  > It sounds like GTK doesn't support themes > I'd petition for GTK to support safe theming, and maybe build up what themes can do in a controlled manner over time GTK already supported themes! In particular, GTK2 has loads of themes (e.g. see the GTK2 category on gnome-look.org https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=136&ord=rating https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=136&ord=rating ). Not only did artists create a wide variety of themes, programmers also wrote many "theme engines" to extend the theming capabilities of GTK2, e.g. see all of the "gtk2-engines-foo" packages in Debian: https://packages.debian.org/search?lang=en&searchon=names&keywords=gtk2-engines https://packages.debian.org/search?lang=en&searchon=names&ke... GTK3 purposefully broke all that, in order to clean up the API, deprecate/replace various functionality, etc.. Fair enough, that's perfectly understandable; and necessary at some point. > ... and some people are using custom CSS overrides to emulate it. > tell everyone to stop with the CSS. To mitigate the damage of losing all existing themes, the GTK3 developers switched to using CSS, so that: - Theming would be much easier than for GTK2, reducing the effort to replace all those existing themes, and for making entirely new ones - By replacing their old bespoke formats with CSS, hordes of Web devs would be able to join in with theming (this is also why the Gnome desktop embraced Javascript around the same time) In other words, those "custom CSS overrides" are not only the officially sanctioned way to do theming; but the project implemented a major breaking-change in order to add CSS support, precisely for this reason! This situation is entirely unlike, say, a Web site breaking due to someone's user-style.css. Web sites typically don't want anyone overriding their CSS, and they only use CSS at all because it's the only thing browsers provide. In contrast, GTK3 chose to implement CSS (previous versions worked fine without it), and they chose it so it could be overridden. --- Unfortunately, this strategy did not work, at all. There was some initial effort at creating and porting themes; but each minor release of GTK3 broke them, requiring constant maintenance from their creators, until most just gave up. For example, see the GTK3/4 category on gnome-look.org ( https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=135&ord=rating https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=135&ord=rating ) and notice: - How many of the changelogs show breakages for every GTK update (usually the even-numbered ones like 3.16, 3.18, 3.20, etc. which are the stable releases) - All of the comments (~one thread a year) reporting breakages, asking for updates for new GTK versions, linking to forks maintained by third-parties, reports that those forks aren't maintained anymore either, etc. Also, compare the Debian link above to this search for GTK3, which only shows one transitional package and one from their "oldoldstable" release: https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&lang=en&searchon=names&keywords=gtk3-engines https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default&section=all... Over this time, Gnome's official position has changed to a combination of: - We'll be adding better theme support soon, and it will be much better than before! - The very idea of theming is an insult to our perfect decisions and aesthetics NOTE: Gnome/GTK developers have pissed off so many people with their 2->3 transition that Gnome 2 got forked into the Mate desktop; the Cinnamon desktop forked Gnome 3 in order to clone Gnome 2; and many projects have been abandoning GTK in favour of alternatives like Qt, e.g. Audacious did so recently.
enriquto 3y ago
I'd rather say: "Please don't theme your apps" ! The visual aspect of apps is a choice of the users, not of the developers. Please, let us users decide what colors, fonts and margins we see on our screens.
- halJordan 3y ago
  And to harp on this point- the destruction of the browser as an actual user-agent to style and present data is one of the biggest complaints about the maturation of the Internet.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  Then you agree with these developers who think user choice is important and want to continue offering it to users with having distributors break their apps by automatically theming them. > On a platform level, we believe GTK should stop forcing a single stylesheet on all apps by default. Instead of apps having to opt out of this by hardcoding a stylesheet, they should use the platform stylesheet unless they opt in to something else. We realize this is a complicated issue, but assuming every app works with every stylesheet is a bad default.
w______roy 3y ago
A lot of folks seem pissed off by this, but it cannot be denied it adds a lot of headaches for developers. Specifically really demoralizing to UI/UX devs who try and bring their skills to the open source world (either they are designing UI that is getting overhauled by themes, or they're designing themes that are getting shunned in missives like this). But all of this feels like an expectation of folks who want the free software ecosystem to more closely resemble how their disciplines function in the hierarchical divisions of responsibility and control in the private corporate world.
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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bmacho 3y ago
The soap refill bottle that I use has "Please, don't dilute it with water" written on its side. No explanation, no warning, just this. With the equivalent of "please" in my language. I always got super fascinated by this, they ask me such a random thing, that shouldn't really affect them (okay, I buy less soap if I dilute it with water), but makes my life worse. I have a similar feeling with this article. You want me to use the original icons. Okay, noted. When I decide if I want to replace the icons, I will probably consider the wish of the creators too. With a weight approximately 0%.
- wrsh07 3y ago
  Fwiw, I think the exhortation not to dilute the soap with water is equivalent to saying "our guarantees disappear when you add uncontrolled substances into this bottle" Essentially: the warranty is void. Tap water can contain bacteria that a soap manufacturer can't possibly account for [1] This actually makes a perfect analogy for the original post - even though there was no guarantee or warranty (it's free software) when you theme your computer, it makes dealing with bug reports difficult. It makes screenshots misleading. If you want to theme your computer, they actually specifically say that's fine, but I imagine they would appreciate 1) noting what theme you use on screenshots (much like noting the prompt that generated an image) or removing the theme when taking screenshots and 2) try debugging and reproducing issues with the theme turned off. If you're developing software and >50% of the bug reports you field are because people are doing something unsupported that is frustrating [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-you-dont-need-to-splurge-on-a-pricey-hand-soap/2020/02/11/6b655d9e-4462-11ea-aa6a-083d01b3ed18_story.html# https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-you-do...
denysonique 3y ago
I don't quite understand to whom exactly is this addressed? Distro creators/maintainers, ok it makes sense. But end users?
- wrsh07 3y ago
  Distro creators and maintainers yes. End users when reporting bugs. If you don't realize your distro is theming that's also something you should know.
5- 3y ago
interestingly, of the applications whose authors have signed, i only ever tried geary some time ago and concluded it was way too feature-poor and inconvenient in terms of the user interface to serve as a mail client. never had an incentive to install any of the others. (i have been using linux full time, both personally and professionally, for the last two decades).
prophesi 3y ago
Moved from iOS to Android recently and the first thing I did was install a new FOSS launcher and Articons. The Settings menu and sharesheet still show the original app icons. App theming choices are much more limited, just hope they respect your system theme and font scaling, which the latter definitely can break layouts rendering some apps unusable. I don't really have a point with all of this; I just think there's a middleground that can be met to let users modify whatever they'd like, and straying from the Happy Path that devs test for could show a warning or a way to let them choose to revert certain system defaults for your app.
ok123456 3y ago
don't care. theming anyway.
brycewray 3y ago
Previous discussions... - 2023-09-26 (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37655658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37655658 - 2021-09-03 (80 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28400337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28400337 - 2021-05-15 (4 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167115 - 2019-05-25 (194 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20008396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20008396 - 2019-05-24 (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000358
aidenn0 3y ago
Request to GNOME app developers. Don't move the most common buttons to the Header Bar while also not getting rid of the toolbar. This makes my most common actions further away from where my mouse is most likely to be.
CoolGuySteve 3y ago
Almost every Windows app discards the default theme in favour of some idiosyncratic mess. It sucks. If a distro's default theme breaks an app then it's something the distro and app will have to work together and fix. But throwing system themes out in favour of app specific themes like the article is arguing for sounds absolutely awful.
overgard 3y ago
Agree. I think it hurts the brand of the apps when they're themed, in that I load it and it looks jumbled and broken and I instantly think oh they dont care how this looks
sanitycheck 3y ago
As a user, I'd appreciate it if these developers did disable theming in their apps - at least as a config switch. If an app hasn't been properly tested with numerous themes the chances are that it'll break. The default Pop OS dark theme messes up several apps and it's a pain to poke around and fix them by editing obscure files. If it doesn't support theming I'd rather it look out of place than be partially illegible. Also, sometimes even if I like things dark in general there's some software which just feels wrong if it's not light - like a word processor. The white background is representing paper, I don't want that to be inverted - and I don't want the toolbars etc to go dark either, because the contrast against the white page becomes unpleasant.
starkparker 3y ago
Amazing how much good prefixing the title with "Distro maintainers:" would've done.
timw4mail 3y ago
Funny how this only seems to be an issue with GTK apps, and not with QT.
bloopernova 3y ago
If I encounter a bug, I'm not going to force the developer to deal with my themes. If I'm filing an issue, one of the first things I do is a fresh install to consistently reproduce it, which means no themes.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  This is exactly the type of confusion at issue here. A "fresh install" doesn't necessarily remove default themes applied by the distribution.
  - bloopernova 3y ago
    Ahhh, that's a good point. I guess I'm used to theming applications individually.
chriswarbo 3y ago
> Though we could disable theming directly in our apps, we do not want to resort to this. Lol, I look forward to the followup sites: StopPatchingThemeSupportBackIntoMy.App StopDistributingYourOwnBuildsOfMy.App StopUsingTheMorePopularForkOfMy.App GTK2 has a large ecosystem of themes, and flexible (but slow) engines like pixbuf for those who don't want to write C. GTK3 broke that, but promised that its CSS-like styling would let a hundred flowers blossom as Web devs could contribute. Over a decade later and scouring OpenDesktop shows mostly just "flat design" and "flat design - dark mode". I know that GTK vs Qt and Gnome vs KDE are holy wars, but GTK/Gnome seem to be squandering their position as the distro's default choice. Many standalone/third-party projects have jumped ship (e.g. PCManFM, LXDE, Audacious); I wonder if major distros will do the same (after all, Ubuntu wasn't afraid to push Unity). PS: OK, I admit Vertex is quite nice; but GTK seems to keep breaking themes with each point-release https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013757 https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013757 PPS: Are we really calling things "apps" now? PPPS: Does anyone know a (not yet broken) GTK3/4 theme which changes the scrollbars from their godawful default? I've been looking for years; I'd roll my own, but the lack of diversity across themes makes me worry it's too painful to bother. (Written from Firefox (which uses GTK) on Phosh (a mobile-friendly Gnome compositor) on a Pinephone ;) )
adamzochowski 3y ago
I don't understand the issue? The first screenshot (CSS Theming) shows an app that doesn't use standard background color (?offwhite?), but uses standard font color. Normally this works, as standard font color is something dark (?black?). And the problem becomes when user opens the app in dark mode, the background color stays non standard (?offwhite?), but the font color stays standard, which in dark mode makes fonts bright (?white?). The question is: If developer is ignoring theming, why don't they hard code both background and foreground colors? There is one solution : stop using off theme coloring This is squarely for developer to fix. But since they want Gnome/GTK to fix this, here are potential options: - Gnome / GTK should implement that if someone wants to use non standard, off theme colors, then developer has to always define foreground and background color. --- not sure how feasible it this with nested frames - Gnome / GTK should disable allowing changing colors to specific values, and only allow changing by rotating Hue (aka 5% rotation of Hue 'clockwise') and by changing saturating (aka 5% more grayscale) and by changing brightness/contrast in relation to paired color (aka: background 5% closer shade to font) - Gnome / GTK should define more color pairs , kind of like bootstrap has primary/secondary/success/danger/warning/info/light/dark coloring for all components in a single theme
tamimio 3y ago
I think that goes against the philosophy of free software, also, as long as there’s no standardized way of making these icons, I absolutely support theme-ing them so at least I have a consistent look when I open my apps drawer, to be honest, a lot of free software developers are great programmers but they are horrible when it comes to visual design, UI or even icons.
analognoise 3y ago
"App Icons are the identity of an app. Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand." Oh shut up Gnome, this is why nobody likes you.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Lol fuck you if it's on my computer it's my app.

43 points by fsflover 3y ago

aftbit 3y ago

Make sure your app has a good native dark mode and I won't theme anything.

stalfosknight 3y ago
Yes, exactly this. I'm on macOS but 99% of the time I feel the need to mess around with the appearance of a website or application or something it's because it is blindingly bright white instead of reading the room (or my dark mode setting, as it were).
friend_and_foe 3y ago
A black theme. Black. Not dark gray, not slightly teal, black. Flat, everything, solid black but interactive elements and text. I used an app on my phone recently that had an AMOLED option, clearly labelled AMOLED, that was gray. These people are crazy.

Zambyte 3y ago

Issue I opened explaining why this doesn't make any sense (2020): https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue... The responses from GNOME members were quite enlightening. Really shows the level of respect they have for anyone besides the in club.

orangepurple 3y ago
[flagged]
- Zambyte 3y ago
  There are quite a few other GNOME devs that have signed the letter, and presumably share the same sentiment.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    That will be an issue they will need to deal with because of the license they chose. They picked GPL (https://help.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/license.html.en https://help.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/license.html.en) that means as long as the intermediary ships their changes too then all is good. They are basically asking to be the only fork of their code. I get it, they have spent tons of time getting it 'just right'. They may find that a hard sell to some integrators who make it a point to put their own spin on their distro. This is basically a 'do not fork our code' ask.
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      It's more of a "don't fork, modify and distribute our code without QAing those changes and proving your own support."
      - sumtechguy 3y ago
        I get the idea. But the GPL allows for this? They would need a different license to get that? Pretty sure GPL is 'we may or may not give support if we feel like it' sort of license. The only real obligation is to provide the code including any changes you make.
        shkkmo 3y ago
        This letter isn't a legal demand, this is a request to people who are interested in the health of the ecosystem and community. The way similar sorts of issues are often enforced legally is by using trademarks so that if someone forks your project, they have to be clear that it is separate. In this case, it isn't a fork and it's hard to see how those tools would apply but the underlying issue of user confusion and brand harm are still similar.
        sumtechguy 3y ago
        Oh I get that. But what many do not realize when they give the work away like in the GPL you also give away control. They have given away control but now are asking for it back. That is up to the distros if they want to do that. They are perfectly allowed to do so. But they are perfectly allowed to not do so. This is one of the 'downsides' to open source. People may use your source in a way you do not like. I have this same conversation every few years with people on the net. It is usually about the time they realize people are not giving stuff back up stream (their intent) but realty is GPL does not require that. It basically is for a better term a fork. A small fork but a fork non the less. There are changes they are distributed downstream, but the rub is not back upstream. In this particular case people are going thru the trouble of making a theme pack that is kind of unfinished. But not finishing the work and not upstreaming it either for whatever reason. Hence the letter. But strongly worded letters do not always get things done. Maybe it will but I doubt it. The distros forked because the upstream was not doing what they needed. So the distro managers did it. But now they are asking 'just ignore that part of the GPL that says you can modify the code'. This is basically a missing feature of the upstream so downstream is adding it in. I see both sides I really do. But if you give away code do not always expect it to be used in the way you expect.
- lexicality 3y ago
  Searching "mikhaylenko gnome" gives you Alice's former name and past contributions.
dxbednarczyk 3y ago
> They're like an arrogant chef who, after cooking your dinner, instructs the waiter to remove all the salt and pepper shakers from the table because they don't want you changing the flavor of their dish. [1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15#issuecomment-962569563 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
- Zambyte 3y ago
  And just before that > Just because something is technically possible and not illegal doesn't mean it's not a dick move [1] https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issues/15#issuecomment-648456147 https://github.com/do-not-theme/do-not-theme.github.io/issue...
- d_tr 3y ago
  They are more like a chef who asks the waiters to not add salt or pepper to the dish before serving it to customers, because the customers will blame the chef then. If the customer adds a ton of salt, then it's clearly their fault and the chef says he is fine with that. Sounds reasonable to me.
vinceguidry 3y ago
C'mon. You are telling people that build and maintain core infrastructure used on millions of Linux installations all around the world that they are fundamentally misunderstanding Linux. This is why I don't maintain free software, and God bless those who do.
- apetresc 3y ago
  If you look at the signees (especially the two or three that actually seem the most invested in this message, and responded to the discussion thread linked above), you will see that these are not the people building "core infrastructure" used by "millions". It's a random grab-bag of default Gnome applications, the kind most Linux users who are aware of alternatives immediately remove from distributions that ship it. "Random Gnome developers" as a group have been notorious for decades for not really gelling with the wider Linux ecosystem. Looking at the project maintained by the front-runner of this movement, it has had 5 total reported issues in the last year, none of which are related to theming, so I'm not sure I understand what the big support struggle they're chafing at is either.
  - vinceguidry 3y ago
    > It's a random grab-bag of default Gnome applications, Default applications! On one of the two major desktop frameworks in Linux! Oh I'm sure what you're working on is so much more important.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Do you actually disagree with any of the points I made? Or just the fact that I made those points to people who supposedly have positions of authority?
  - vinceguidry 3y ago
    Yes, I do. But it's clear the words would be wasted when the perspectives are that far apart.
    - 3y ago

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Kim_Bruning 3y ago

I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, ui consistency is a thing, and everyone making up their own paradigm is not great. (And the linux desktop is already highly inconsistent as is). But I think we passed that station a long time ago. On the third hand, if you do have themability, it ought to not break apps that are thus themable. I'm not sure if that's an app problem or a gnome problem or a both problem here. In the main "please don't theme our app" might be the wrong approach though. It somehow seems to go against the spirit of open-sourceness. Not saying the issue is with the upstream dev per-se, but something is definitely going wrong here.

nerdjon 3y ago

I have some conflicted feelings on this, I feel like this should be controllable as a user and not blockable by developers. My single biggest pet pieve with my iPhone is when a developer (Google is a big offender) decides that instead of sticking with native design language they are just going to steamroll their own design language onto a device it wasn't meant for. I feel like consistency goes a long way towards a better computing device.

shkkmo 3y ago
Then you agree with this letter. It is calling put a specific issue and currently the only way to fix it would be to take away user theming by hard coding a stylesheet. Since that removal of user choice is antithetical to these developers, they are looking for better solutions. One solution is asking distributors to not apply themes to apps by default without doing QA on those apps. The other solution is to provide apps a way to opt out of system default themes without those apps having to remove user choice by hard coding the stylesheet.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  There is a third option and to me is likely the better option. The themes are applied by default but there is somewhere to easily disable it on a a per app basis by the user and not by the app developer. This makes it so some consistency is the default option but if something breaks then you can disable it. Maybe throw in some user education if you are really worried about this. Edit: Also to be clear I don't really agree with the article. I understand some of the points it makes but considering downloading an app and it having a different UI is a frustration for me I would be very happy if on my iPhone I could somehow overwrite parts of that UI. (Ultimately right now I just uninstall it)
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    I think the UX of requiring users to opt out of untested and likely broken themes on a per app basis is bad. I think an opt-in via prompt on first run (or whatever) is a better experience since it makes the distinction clear in case stuff breaks and provides an opportunity to warn users about potential breakage.

mcluck 3y ago

I use Linux because I like tweaking my system and that includes theming. I agree that people shouldn't report bugs if their custom theme makes an app goofy or broken but to suggest that people and distros should not use custom themes is ridiculous

wrsh07 3y ago
Imo you and the author of the article seem to agree You're not recommending blanket tweaks for all users and are savvy enough to remove the theme (or fix it) if it's breaking an app you want to use before reporting issues My impression of the article is a request against generic re theming. I suspect there's a better path forwards though. Eg distros could make their themes more modular (relocation of UI elements, changing colors, changing icons - maybe this already happens!) and then make it easy to toggle these when opening a new app (just like the OS gives you a minute to decide if your monitor display settings tweaks broke something for you)

barnabee 3y ago

Completely antithetical to free software. If I want to modify your code or the environment it runs in, I will. Gnome is not an OS or a "platform", it is free (as in freedom!) software to be used and tied together however the users, distro authors, ansd whoever else feels like. Writing and publishing open source software then trying to guilt trip people into interacting with it at arms length and subject to condiions like closed source, proprietary software is nuts. I honestly couldn't care less if all these people quit writing software tomorrow, if the alternative is this nonsense.

brodouevencode 3y ago
Clarification here: they are asking you to not, and warning that you're getting into "unsupported territory".
- Longhanks 3y ago
  Unless both parties signed a contract, there is no "supported territory". The GPL clearly states that there needs not even be a particular purpose.
  - lacksconfidence 3y ago
    And yet, open source software lives and dies on support. Projects that are perceived as having unresponsive upstreams that don't support the project are often in a death spiral.
  - brodouevencode 3y ago
    Fair. I think what they mean by supported though is (in a very simple example) if you complain about a missing button but it's because your DE theme washes it out then they aren't going to help, otherwise they'd look at the issue and try to resolve it. I think this is reasonable. Sure there's no awareness, consideration, capacity and all that but a reasonable attempt at support.
  - tylerhou 3y ago
    I think "unsupported" here clearly does not mean a legal obligation to support, but rather "support" in the sense that in the free software community, it is convention for developers to provide help to (nonpaying) users, and that convention should not apply if users make certain changes to the software.

rendaw 3y ago

The linked article has some more critical information. It sounds like GTK doesn't support themes (i.e. structured styling with mechanically enforced boundaries, guidelines, etc), and some people are using custom CSS overrides to emulate it. But this means literally anything could change, and app developers can't really defend about it, so apps break. IMO I'd petition for GTK to support safe theming, and maybe build up what themes can do in a controlled manner over time, rather than just tell everyone to stop with the CSS. But maybe it's a foregone conclusion that GTK devs won't do this. I'm sympathetic to users. I don't think devs have the right to force branding on users and there are good accessibility reasons to want themes, but its also reasonable for devs to want their software to not look like crap out of the box and there are carefully hand crafted UIs for specific uses that will never fit a theming standard.

chriswarbo 3y ago
> It sounds like GTK doesn't support themes > I'd petition for GTK to support safe theming, and maybe build up what themes can do in a controlled manner over time GTK already supported themes! In particular, GTK2 has loads of themes (e.g. see the GTK2 category on gnome-look.org https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=136&ord=rating https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=136&ord=rating ). Not only did artists create a wide variety of themes, programmers also wrote many "theme engines" to extend the theming capabilities of GTK2, e.g. see all of the "gtk2-engines-foo" packages in Debian: https://packages.debian.org/search?lang=en&searchon=names&keywords=gtk2-engines https://packages.debian.org/search?lang=en&searchon=names&ke... GTK3 purposefully broke all that, in order to clean up the API, deprecate/replace various functionality, etc.. Fair enough, that's perfectly understandable; and necessary at some point. > ... and some people are using custom CSS overrides to emulate it. > tell everyone to stop with the CSS. To mitigate the damage of losing all existing themes, the GTK3 developers switched to using CSS, so that: - Theming would be much easier than for GTK2, reducing the effort to replace all those existing themes, and for making entirely new ones - By replacing their old bespoke formats with CSS, hordes of Web devs would be able to join in with theming (this is also why the Gnome desktop embraced Javascript around the same time) In other words, those "custom CSS overrides" are not only the officially sanctioned way to do theming; but the project implemented a major breaking-change in order to add CSS support, precisely for this reason! This situation is entirely unlike, say, a Web site breaking due to someone's user-style.css. Web sites typically don't want anyone overriding their CSS, and they only use CSS at all because it's the only thing browsers provide. In contrast, GTK3 chose to implement CSS (previous versions worked fine without it), and they chose it so it could be overridden. --- Unfortunately, this strategy did not work, at all. There was some initial effort at creating and porting themes; but each minor release of GTK3 broke them, requiring constant maintenance from their creators, until most just gave up. For example, see the GTK3/4 category on gnome-look.org ( https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=135&ord=rating https://www.gnome-look.org/browse?cat=135&ord=rating ) and notice: - How many of the changelogs show breakages for every GTK update (usually the even-numbered ones like 3.16, 3.18, 3.20, etc. which are the stable releases) - All of the comments (~one thread a year) reporting breakages, asking for updates for new GTK versions, linking to forks maintained by third-parties, reports that those forks aren't maintained anymore either, etc. Also, compare the Debian link above to this search for GTK3, which only shows one transitional package and one from their "oldoldstable" release: https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&lang=en&searchon=names&keywords=gtk3-engines https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default&section=all... Over this time, Gnome's official position has changed to a combination of: - We'll be adding better theme support soon, and it will be much better than before! - The very idea of theming is an insult to our perfect decisions and aesthetics NOTE: Gnome/GTK developers have pissed off so many people with their 2->3 transition that Gnome 2 got forked into the Mate desktop; the Cinnamon desktop forked Gnome 3 in order to clone Gnome 2; and many projects have been abandoning GTK in favour of alternatives like Qt, e.g. Audacious did so recently.

enriquto 3y ago

I'd rather say: "Please don't theme your apps" ! The visual aspect of apps is a choice of the users, not of the developers. Please, let us users decide what colors, fonts and margins we see on our screens.

halJordan 3y ago
And to harp on this point- the destruction of the browser as an actual user-agent to style and present data is one of the biggest complaints about the maturation of the Internet.
shkkmo 3y ago
Then you agree with these developers who think user choice is important and want to continue offering it to users with having distributors break their apps by automatically theming them. > On a platform level, we believe GTK should stop forcing a single stylesheet on all apps by default. Instead of apps having to opt out of this by hardcoding a stylesheet, they should use the platform stylesheet unless they opt in to something else. We realize this is a complicated issue, but assuming every app works with every stylesheet is a bad default.

w______roy 3y ago

A lot of folks seem pissed off by this, but it cannot be denied it adds a lot of headaches for developers. Specifically really demoralizing to UI/UX devs who try and bring their skills to the open source world (either they are designing UI that is getting overhauled by themes, or they're designing themes that are getting shunned in missives like this). But all of this feels like an expectation of folks who want the free software ecosystem to more closely resemble how their disciplines function in the hierarchical divisions of responsibility and control in the private corporate world.

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bmacho 3y ago

The soap refill bottle that I use has "Please, don't dilute it with water" written on its side. No explanation, no warning, just this. With the equivalent of "please" in my language. I always got super fascinated by this, they ask me such a random thing, that shouldn't really affect them (okay, I buy less soap if I dilute it with water), but makes my life worse. I have a similar feeling with this article. You want me to use the original icons. Okay, noted. When I decide if I want to replace the icons, I will probably consider the wish of the creators too. With a weight approximately 0%.

wrsh07 3y ago
Fwiw, I think the exhortation not to dilute the soap with water is equivalent to saying "our guarantees disappear when you add uncontrolled substances into this bottle" Essentially: the warranty is void. Tap water can contain bacteria that a soap manufacturer can't possibly account for [1] This actually makes a perfect analogy for the original post - even though there was no guarantee or warranty (it's free software) when you theme your computer, it makes dealing with bug reports difficult. It makes screenshots misleading. If you want to theme your computer, they actually specifically say that's fine, but I imagine they would appreciate 1) noting what theme you use on screenshots (much like noting the prompt that generated an image) or removing the theme when taking screenshots and 2) try debugging and reproducing issues with the theme turned off. If you're developing software and >50% of the bug reports you field are because people are doing something unsupported that is frustrating [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-you-dont-need-to-splurge-on-a-pricey-hand-soap/2020/02/11/6b655d9e-4462-11ea-aa6a-083d01b3ed18_story.html# https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-you-do...

denysonique 3y ago

I don't quite understand to whom exactly is this addressed? Distro creators/maintainers, ok it makes sense. But end users?

wrsh07 3y ago
Distro creators and maintainers yes. End users when reporting bugs. If you don't realize your distro is theming that's also something you should know.

5- 3y ago

interestingly, of the applications whose authors have signed, i only ever tried geary some time ago and concluded it was way too feature-poor and inconvenient in terms of the user interface to serve as a mail client. never had an incentive to install any of the others. (i have been using linux full time, both personally and professionally, for the last two decades).

prophesi 3y ago

Moved from iOS to Android recently and the first thing I did was install a new FOSS launcher and Articons. The Settings menu and sharesheet still show the original app icons. App theming choices are much more limited, just hope they respect your system theme and font scaling, which the latter definitely can break layouts rendering some apps unusable. I don't really have a point with all of this; I just think there's a middleground that can be met to let users modify whatever they'd like, and straying from the Happy Path that devs test for could show a warning or a way to let them choose to revert certain system defaults for your app.

ok123456 3y ago

don't care. theming anyway.

brycewray 3y ago

Previous discussions... - 2023-09-26 (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37655658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37655658 - 2021-09-03 (80 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28400337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28400337 - 2021-05-15 (4 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167115 - 2019-05-25 (194 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20008396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20008396 - 2019-05-24 (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000358

aidenn0 3y ago

Request to GNOME app developers. Don't move the most common buttons to the Header Bar while also not getting rid of the toolbar. This makes my most common actions further away from where my mouse is most likely to be.

CoolGuySteve 3y ago

Almost every Windows app discards the default theme in favour of some idiosyncratic mess. It sucks. If a distro's default theme breaks an app then it's something the distro and app will have to work together and fix. But throwing system themes out in favour of app specific themes like the article is arguing for sounds absolutely awful.

overgard 3y ago

Agree. I think it hurts the brand of the apps when they're themed, in that I load it and it looks jumbled and broken and I instantly think oh they dont care how this looks

sanitycheck 3y ago

As a user, I'd appreciate it if these developers did disable theming in their apps - at least as a config switch. If an app hasn't been properly tested with numerous themes the chances are that it'll break. The default Pop OS dark theme messes up several apps and it's a pain to poke around and fix them by editing obscure files. If it doesn't support theming I'd rather it look out of place than be partially illegible. Also, sometimes even if I like things dark in general there's some software which just feels wrong if it's not light - like a word processor. The white background is representing paper, I don't want that to be inverted - and I don't want the toolbars etc to go dark either, because the contrast against the white page becomes unpleasant.

starkparker 3y ago

Amazing how much good prefixing the title with "Distro maintainers:" would've done.

timw4mail 3y ago

Funny how this only seems to be an issue with GTK apps, and not with QT.

bloopernova 3y ago

If I encounter a bug, I'm not going to force the developer to deal with my themes. If I'm filing an issue, one of the first things I do is a fresh install to consistently reproduce it, which means no themes.

shkkmo 3y ago
This is exactly the type of confusion at issue here. A "fresh install" doesn't necessarily remove default themes applied by the distribution.
- bloopernova 3y ago
  Ahhh, that's a good point. I guess I'm used to theming applications individually.

chriswarbo 3y ago

> Though we could disable theming directly in our apps, we do not want to resort to this. Lol, I look forward to the followup sites: StopPatchingThemeSupportBackIntoMy.App StopDistributingYourOwnBuildsOfMy.App StopUsingTheMorePopularForkOfMy.App GTK2 has a large ecosystem of themes, and flexible (but slow) engines like pixbuf for those who don't want to write C. GTK3 broke that, but promised that its CSS-like styling would let a hundred flowers blossom as Web devs could contribute. Over a decade later and scouring OpenDesktop shows mostly just "flat design" and "flat design - dark mode". I know that GTK vs Qt and Gnome vs KDE are holy wars, but GTK/Gnome seem to be squandering their position as the distro's default choice. Many standalone/third-party projects have jumped ship (e.g. PCManFM, LXDE, Audacious); I wonder if major distros will do the same (after all, Ubuntu wasn't afraid to push Unity). PS: OK, I admit Vertex is quite nice; but GTK seems to keep breaking themes with each point-release https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013757 https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013757 PPS: Are we really calling things "apps" now? PPPS: Does anyone know a (not yet broken) GTK3/4 theme which changes the scrollbars from their godawful default? I've been looking for years; I'd roll my own, but the lack of diversity across themes makes me worry it's too painful to bother. (Written from Firefox (which uses GTK) on Phosh (a mobile-friendly Gnome compositor) on a Pinephone ;) )

adamzochowski 3y ago

I don't understand the issue? The first screenshot (CSS Theming) shows an app that doesn't use standard background color (?offwhite?), but uses standard font color. Normally this works, as standard font color is something dark (?black?). And the problem becomes when user opens the app in dark mode, the background color stays non standard (?offwhite?), but the font color stays standard, which in dark mode makes fonts bright (?white?). The question is: If developer is ignoring theming, why don't they hard code both background and foreground colors? There is one solution : stop using off theme coloring This is squarely for developer to fix. But since they want Gnome/GTK to fix this, here are potential options: - Gnome / GTK should implement that if someone wants to use non standard, off theme colors, then developer has to always define foreground and background color. --- not sure how feasible it this with nested frames - Gnome / GTK should disable allowing changing colors to specific values, and only allow changing by rotating Hue (aka 5% rotation of Hue 'clockwise') and by changing saturating (aka 5% more grayscale) and by changing brightness/contrast in relation to paired color (aka: background 5% closer shade to font) - Gnome / GTK should define more color pairs , kind of like bootstrap has primary/secondary/success/danger/warning/info/light/dark coloring for all components in a single theme

tamimio 3y ago

I think that goes against the philosophy of free software, also, as long as there’s no standardized way of making these icons, I absolutely support theme-ing them so at least I have a consistent look when I open my apps drawer, to be honest, a lot of free software developers are great programmers but they are horrible when it comes to visual design, UI or even icons.

analognoise 3y ago

"App Icons are the identity of an app. Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand." Oh shut up Gnome, this is why nobody likes you.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Lol fuck you if it's on my computer it's my app.