I’m noticing more and more Apps actively trying to avoid Themes and instead opting for the fixed default look. Even some of the Default Gnome Apps. And then there are initiatives like Please don’t theme our apps. Is this the slow death of GTK Themes, and if yes, why?

  • @pivot_root
    36•14 days ago

    The fact that https://stopthemingmy.app/ isn’t a joke…

    App Icons are the identity of an app. Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand.

    FOSS is built around the principle of software being free, as in freedom. If you want to restrict how a user interacts with your software for the sake of a corporate identity, fuck right off and go to an Apple platform. We won’t miss you.

    Appstream Screenshots (the screenshots used in GNOME Software or Flathub) are not very useful if they look nothing like the real app does once you install it.

    Oh no, how tragic. Your application doesn’t look like your screenshots when running on my customized system. You know what would be more tragic? Your application sticking out like a sore thumb.

    User Help and Documentation are similarly useless if UI elements on your system are different from the ones described in the documentation.

    I’m really struggling to understand their perspective here. Is their documentation really that bad, to the point where it would be impossible to follow if the background color is wrong or if the buttons look like slightly-different buttons?

    The only reasonable complaints they had are with broken styling or icon sets replacing icons in a way that changes their meaning. The rest of this is just straight up stupid.

    • lastweakness
      -4•14 days ago

      That site specifically mentions that tinkerers can do what they want as long as they understand the consequences. So just more pointless hate towards that site as has been seen forever since the website first came up…

      • @pivot_root
        10•14 days ago

        They do, but then go on to contradict themselves:

        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.

        Emphasis theirs. They are explicitly saying that their belief is for applications to use the [original GNOME] platform stylesheet by default, and making the ability to reskin an application opt-in by the application [developer]. I agree that a one size fits all stylesheet is bad, but the solution should be to provide more granular selectors at the toolkit level to allow themes to fix what they break, not force defaults onto everyone.