Call for participation: an ubuntu default theme lead by the community?

Not sure about the patch, however I suggest you to give GNOME Builder a try for building the project. I used it for Nautilus and Calendar without any issue (and basically as a black box, I didn’t set up anything to make it work)

I’ll have a look at your other request, if I can be of any help :wink:

The Yaru team is happy to announce a new stable release!

This is a small release to resync with the usual Monday release scheduling.

Here the changes since last release

  • fixed entry on headerbar
  • fixed notebook tabs in Nautilus
  • fixes in build scripts
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To get source with patches, you can use

apt-get source gnome-terminal

once you enabled deb-src repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list

probably (if this is still up to date) to test the package without the patch, you can use quilt removing the patch first from the folder… or simply removing the patch from the source and build with builder

A busy week for me so rather during the weekend. Thanks for your help. I wouldn’t have found the link myself :wink:

EDIT: For now I failed getting the ssh keys for proper registering to launchpad (and signing the code of conduct), but I succeeded somehow by just searching Launchpad. This is the bug where this patch originates from: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=754796 . Marco Trevisan (=Trevinho) authored it. The patch diff can be searched for within that link: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/388973470/gnome-terminal_3.28.2-1_3.30.0-1ubuntu1.diff.gz (just search for “debian/patches/scrollbar-background-theming.patch”): 83 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

As far as I can see the patch was used to achieve the former ultra-slim Unity/Ambience scrollbars:

Unpatched:
grafik

Patched:
grafik
(the screenshots stem from Egmond Koblinger in the bug linked above)

Maybe Didrocks could simply ask Trevinho if the patch can be dropped with our Yaru theme in place now?

At least in 2015 there weren’t any visible glitches in Ambiance but that probably regressed since. My best bet is that the code pushes to terminal-screen-container in October 2017 (bug 733210 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733210 ) or the switch from Unity broke it.

EDIT 2: Bedtime :wink:

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I would like not to regress in ambiance too, so if anyone who has look into this could help in getting a patch for ambiance that keeping things working there while dropping the patch, would be nice.

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Do we really care about regressions in Ambience when Yaru is the new default theme now?

Especially when there is the choice between regressing GNOME/Yaru and Unity/Ambiance, I think the supported one should be glitch-free. Or will there really be a complete breakage of the Ambience theme?

Indeed Yaru has the precedence, just i’d prefer not to regress that too, since it still has users (ubuntu-unity don’t think moved to that yet).

Anyways, we might probably workaround this by just enabling the terminal patch when using Ambiance/Radiance themes. As eventually they’re the only ones which need this change.

Not just Ambiance, Numix, Greybird also adapted their code based on that patch. Except they doesn’t use transparent background. If Yaru doesn’t want that Yaru should simply set scrollbar-bg-color and remove the bottom border.

The patch breaks the scrollbar in GNOME. It’s not a theme issue or a question of preference: It looks completely broken on bright backgrounds and cannot be fixed by the Yaru team. It is NOT a theme issue at all, the scrollbar just moved out of bounds.

Now we have the Unity memorial glitch.

1 Like

I had noticed that too. Was this intentional?

Theme evaluation

Hello! I have been asked to evaluate the Yaru theme and look for any glitches.

This is not an exhaustive review. It focuses on the shell, file manager, and other default apps. Some of these issues may be in the apps or toolkit, rather than in Yaru itself. I’m happy to report individual bugs if someone will let me know where is the best place to do that. Update: these are now all reported in GitHub.

Focus and selection

  • Some buttons, menus, and tabs have a dashed focus ring…

    Button focus dashed Button focus dashed dark

    text field

    …while other buttons, and all text fields, have a solid focus ring.

    Button focus solid

    Focus ring for text field in Firefox

    It’s not clear whether this is deliberate, but it looks inconsistent. Update: reported as #844.

  • The text selection color scheme is very different on a light background (black text, #bfebfa highlight) than on a dark background (white text, #0f95c5 highlight), but the focus ring orange is identical (#e95420).

    Focus and selection on light background Focus and selection on dark background in Save dialog

    Either the text selection colors should be identical too, or the focus ring color should change in the same way and by the same amount. Update: reported as #845.

Menus

  • Menus have rounded corners in native GTK apps…

    Menu pulldown in Files Context menu GTK

    …and even in LibreOffice, but not in Firefox.

    Menu pulldown in Firefox Menu context in Firefox

    This is odd because Firefox does correctly include the tail at the top of dropdown menus. Update: reported as #846.

  • DarkShell menus are hard to see against dark backgrounds, unless your screen is at just the right angle. Perhaps they could have some kind of halo (visible only in the dark) as well as a shadow (visible only in the light). Update: reported as #847.

    Menu dark against a dark background

Other toolkit elements

  • An active tab label is 1px lower than inactive tab labels. Maybe this is intentional, but since inactive tabs have no visible outlines to indicate that, it looks accidental. Update: reported as #854.

  • The grabbing hand cursor is hardly recognizable as a hand. There are no fingertips, no visible knuckles, and the thumbtip is square. Update: reported as #855.

    Cursor hand

Files app

  • The banner for the Trash / Rubbish Bin is purple. Purple doesn’t seem to be used anywhere else in the app. I think it would be more appropriate to use some shade of grey for this. Update: reported as #856.

Rubbish Bin banner

Icons

  • The default app icons are a mixture of Ubuntu-Touch-style rounded icons (such as Calculator, Calendar, and Shotwell) and icons with varied shapes (such as Firefox, LibreOffice, and Mahjongg). Update: already reported as #821.

    Icons for apps

    I don’t think it would be a good idea for all icons to be the same shape, even if we could achieve it. But I’m sure that shaping them manually will never, ever achieve it. Many app vendors would either not know, not bother, or disagree. And for as long we tried, OS releases would continue to look sloppy.

  • The Rhythmbox icon is, I think, highly unlikely to be recognized except by people who remember what the icon used to look like (in which case they might recognize the color scheme). For everyone else, it’s just staring. :eye: Update: reported as #859.

    Icon for Rhythmbox

  • The icons for Language Support and Software & Updates Settings are both globes, one containing a world map, the other against a background of a world map. There’s nothing language-y or software-ish in either icon, to hint at which is which. Update: reported as #861.

    Icons for Language Support and Software & Updates Settings

  • Ubuntu Software and Software Updater have icons that differ only in colour. This makes them harder to tell apart (especially, but not only, if you’re colour-blind). Update: reported as #862.

    Icons for Ubuntu Software and Software Updater

    In addition, the As are back-to-front. When a font varies in stroke thickness, NE/SW strokes are thinner, NW/SE strokes are thicker.

    As

    Finally, it’s not a good idea for an app icon to include a pretend progress bar, which could be mistaken for a real one. Update: reported as #863.

  • The aspect ratio of folders in icons is noticeably inconsistent between the “Files” app icon (tangible area 32px/28px ≈ 1.14) and actual folder icons (84px/78px ≈ 1.08). The app icon looks more realistic, at least for a folder that would contain A4 or US Letter paper. Update: reported as #864.

    Icons for folders

  • The arrow and line in the sidebar Downloads icon has a very different aspect ratio (12px/15px = 0.8) than the arrow and line on the Downloads folder icon (22px/38px ≈ 0.58). Update: reported as #865.

    Icons for Downloads

  • The icon for a text file is a piece of paper, typeset, with rounded corners. Real folders may occasionally have rounded corners, but real sheets of paper hardly ever do, especially when they have lots of text on them. This also makes icons with thumbnails inconsistent in style with icons without thumbnails. Update: reported as #866.

    Icon for text file

  • The Ubuntu Desktop is only ever a rectangle on a computer screen. It’s not a physical object (though it uses one as a metaphor), or song that can be played, or a database that can be queried, or anything else with a variety of visual interpretations. It exists, at any moment, as a precise block of pixels, and Ubuntu knows exactly what those pixels are.

    Despite this, neither of the icons for the Desktop look anything like the Desktop. One is light grey, with a launcher but no top bar, and the other is blue with a top bar but no launcher. And both have rounded corners, when the actual desktop doesn’t (and neither do the other sidebar icons).

    Icons for Desktop

    Ideally, I think, both icons would be a miniature of your current actual desktop (with the sidebar version desaturated), which is something an icon theme can’t do by itself. But next best would be a miniature of the default desktop background. Perhaps this could be auto-generated whenever a new default background is committed. Update: reported as #867.

  • The icons for the Trash / Rubbish Bin are also inconsistent between the desktop and the Files sidebar. Not just in style (which is excusable, to reduce garishness of the Files window), but in what they represent: a recycle bin with no lid, vs. a grooved metal garbage can with a handled lid and something sitting in front of it. Update: reported as #868.

    Icons for Rubbish Bin

  • Finally, icons for volumes are a mix of sidebar-style outlines and app-style rounded rectangles. Update: reported as #869.

    Icons for volumes

9 Likes

Firefox is not correctly sucking up the gtk3 code. : /
Firefox has brought me sleepless nights already. It’s not a native gtk3 app (as you may know) but is has some “gtk3 code sucking capabilities”
Chrome on the other hand, sucks up everything correctly.

Edit: the best place to report bugs is github

Most other issues seem to be icon related. I’m a bit torn here since 95% of the icon work is done by @snwh
You could either report those on our GitHub repo or on @snwh 's github repo

2 Likes

This one comes from a limitation in gnome-shell. A dashed focus ring is not possible there. So either we change the gtk focus ring to be solid, or we leave it as it is. There are several differences between gnome shell and the gtk theme which we accepted as a design limitation and/or a possibility to divide the the shell from the apps. :man_shrugging:

3 Likes

Thanks @mpt, this is a very interesting analysis :wink:

Yes please, discuss so much content here would be a mess :slight_smile:

here is the github repo link https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru

There is also a wiki page with the reasons behind some decisions

2 Likes

That would be great if the patch could be made theme aware then.

One issue with the broken terminal scrollbar (which is seldom mentioned) is that they are always shown regardless of the content of the window. If the terminal is nearly empty no scrollbars should be shown at all. I hope that diabling the patch for Ubuntu/Yaru will fix that as well.

There is no way to stick an icons into shapes automatically in GNOME Shell. But we can reach an agreement with software developers (Mozilla, The Document Foundation and Remmina) about the creating of Suru icons already from their side.

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I think it could be faster if we provide the Suru icons for this pre installed third party apps after having a legal agreement with them.
@mpt For the other pre installed apps missing the Suru icon we have a pull request already: https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/pull/839

These are GNOME shell popups and have no access to the gtk theme in terms of checking for which gtk theme is active, dark or light.
We would have loved to add the same dropshadow as we’ve added to the OSD popups
Peek 2018-09-21 17-44
Sadly this is not possible (here comes the strange part ->) unless we remove the little arrow
image

We often talked about removing the arrow for having the box-shadow, but we were not sure if removing the arrow would not take off more usability than the box shadow brings.

We could really consider this change - @madsrh @c-lobrano what do you say?

This would be a huge deviation from upstream, which we usually tend to minimize. I would avoid it

3 Likes

It’s also a very big usability loss. The menus look detached from the element you clicked

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Hi @c-lobrano, Community theme (installed using this ppa) with Ubuntu 18.04 .
Now I see there’s also a package named yaru-theme
Thanks~