When many gnome developers released this blog post, a whole lot of people freaked out. Attacking the developers, claiming that they were anti-features and trying to limit user freedom. However, I believe that not only are the writers of this blog post completely in the right. I am going to explain why I agree with them when it comes to theming apps.
However, GTK developers are working on a way of allowing distros to specify color schemes, so they can make apps look more consistent with the look and feel of the distro without needing to change the stylesheet. Apps will always use Adwaita, but you can optionally support color themes using a special API.
That’s why I think it’s very annoying how many devs want to place the blame on the user “Distro”. Asking them to not theme it. It’s perfectly possible to make a Gtk app that doesn’t break with theming, just how it’s possible to make a beautiful HTML page that supports user stylesheets and doesn’t rely on modern overcomplicated layers of frameworks.
Imho, app, theme and Gtk devs need to seat and set up the semantic rules that separate what’s content from what’s style.
A Gtk app should not try to define the style, the theme should.
I get that some apps might want to differentiate themselves from the rest… but then that’s completely against the idea of having a toolkit that’s shared and that gives a consistent look. If what yoiu want is a customizable UI, just go the Google Chrome route and build your entire thing without relying on GTK theming.
deleted by creator
One of developers said
spoiler
don’t hold your breath on that
.
That’s why I think it’s very annoying how many devs want to place the blame on the user “Distro”. Asking them to not theme it. It’s perfectly possible to make a Gtk app that doesn’t break with theming, just how it’s possible to make a beautiful HTML page that supports user stylesheets and doesn’t rely on modern overcomplicated layers of frameworks.
Imho, app, theme and Gtk devs need to seat and set up the semantic rules that separate what’s content from what’s style.
A Gtk app should not try to define the style, the theme should.
I get that some apps might want to differentiate themselves from the rest… but then that’s completely against the idea of having a toolkit that’s shared and that gives a consistent look. If what yoiu want is a customizable UI, just go the Google Chrome route and build your entire thing without relying on GTK theming.