Re: Debian, so ugly and unwieldy!
On Fri, Jun 07, 2019 at 11:24:03AM -0700, James Lu wrote:
> As far as I know, Debian mostly uses default upstream desktop defaults,
> so these concerns apply there too. Evidently some DEs (Plasma, Cinnamon)
> focus on looks out of the box more than others.
Yeah, and when upstream defaults are not good enough, it's the
distribution's task to improve them, just like with any other package. It's
not a bugfix but integration issue, thus distribution is a _better_ place to
do so.
> > I also hate with a passion so-called "UX designers". Those are folks who
> > created Windows 8's Metro tiles, lightgray-on-white "Material Design" flat
> > unmarked controls, and so on. They work from a Mac while not having to
> > actually use what they produce.
>
> I respectfully disagree in the case of actual Android devices, but
> everyone has different preferences.
>From your further comments, I see you prefer flat stuff, which I disdain.
And here's a case where both preferences can easily be made installable,
preferably even in default install. It's the maintainers' job to curate a
good set that satisfies every major side without being bloated.
And which one should be the overall default, is a matter for a flamewar.
One that'd I greatly welcome over our usual incendiary fare.
> > For example:
> > * our XFCE's layout has a thinnish bar with actually useful controls (menu
> > button, window list, desktop list, clock, systray, logout) at the top...
> > plus a tall redundant "OSX dock" that takes a lot of screen real estate.
> > It's too much even on 4:3 aspect ratio, and on currently prevailing 16:9
> > any loss to vertical space is bad. Most code, web pages, human images,
> > etc, benefit from a portrait rather than landscape layout...
>
> I've pushed defaults on my systems for quite a while that change the
> Xfce panel setup to look more like Windows (or the default Plasma 5 /
> Cinnamon look). Whisker-menu also provides speedy search and app
> pinning, a feature I can't live without migrating fresh from Windows 7.
> (It also takes up less space than the default menus!)
For space, I'd get rid of the "Applications" label (we all know what a Start
menu is -- and kids will learn before they even walk properly).
> > * the default theme has a thin disappearing poorly marked scroller. This is
> > nasty with a bad touchpad (laptops), high-resolution small screen (PDAs).
> >
> >
> > * people tend to use computers with only limited lighting. The hacklab I'm
> > in right now has mostly covered windows (and even some artificial light
> > from the above!); at work opening window blinds too much can result in you
> > getting murdered; I for one prefer to hack after midnight rather than at
> > insane times like morning, etc. And this is not just hackers like us --
> > even Windows and Mac brag about "night mode", random websites have this as
> > well, etc. On the other hand, if we install some themes by default they
> > have at most lightish grey background. I packaged
> > dark{cold,mint}-gtk-theme with real black, perhaps there are better ones?
> >
> > => Let's install by default a black theme, perhaps even enable it by default?
>
> +1 for Materia (materia-gtk-theme), especially the dark variant. It's a
> simple, flat dark theme that preserves contrast without being having a
> pitch black background, more so than Arc-Dark and even Adwaita-Dark. The
> widget effects might be a bit much for some but I don't mind them.
Flat! Die, heretic! :)
> Like most well-maintained themes it supports GTK2/3 and a plethora of
> desktops, as well as Qt5 natively via a 3rd party Kvantum theme
> (materia-kde).
I have bad memories wrt trying to make QT use GTK3 themes -- unless that has
improved, GTK2 support is a nice thing so QT can use that.
> My only gripe with this setup is that some apps like Firefox don't
> behave nicely using dark themed GTK themes only; things like buttons and
> input fields end up having black on black text, so I end up overriding
> it to start with GTK_THEME=Materia (the standard/mixed light and dark
> version)
Yeah, but with the emergence of dark themes on Windows and Mac, such web
pages have mostly been fixed.
> > * the default icon theme is fugly
> >
> > => Default to eg. faenza?
>
> I like Numix-Circle but I'm a bit biased there ☺. Faenza, Moka, and
> Papirus are all beautiful icon themes that the desktop's unify look and
> feel. But this unification makes some people upset[1], though I very
> much disagree with their opinion personally.
>
> [1]:
> https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/05/open-letter-stop-gtk-theming-distros
I hate hate hate this approach. Especially, I hate "apps". I want
programs. The latter can integrate with the desktop, and don't have feeding
the developer's ego as the primary purpose.
> > * default font is ugly and poorly hinted -- the latter is especially jarring
> > on a low-resolution screen I'm at right now, the former still applies to
> > one's proper battlestation at home/work. Tarzeau recently had some
> > interesting rants, but even Quicksand that recently got added (during hard
> > freeze...) to desktop-base is pretty nice. Or, if you want something more
> > conventional, Clear Sans (Intel Clear). Or, Inter. Or...
> >
> > => Actually configure a good font by default. Quicksand looks fine.
> >
>
> I use Noto Sans, which supports a lot of languages out of the box and is
> the default in at least Cinnamon AFAIK.
Noto has one technical problem: it registers hundreds of font family ones,
making font selection dialogs useless if you have Noto installed.
It'd be better if we had just "Noto Sans", "Noto Serif" and "Noto Mono"
instead of "Noto Southwestern Reformed Klingon" as a separate family.
> Also, anti-aliasing + Slight hinting + RGB Sub-pixel order on my Xfce
> setup. This is what I've gotten used to, though font hinting changes
> seem so subtle I don't know how much I'd notice a change.
Sub-pixel is awesome, but doesn't work right if your monitors have different
orientations (and with both code and almost all webpages being better in
portrait, you want one monitor in lanscape and 1 or 2 in portrait).
Not an issue with laptops, of course.
> > * CSD is still a thing. No, your special program shouldn't get to ignore
> > system theme, put controls in wrong order, miss some controls, not respond
> > to minimize/etc if it's currently busy, etc. Consistency not one-off
> > designs.
> >
> > => Install gtk3-nocsd by default in all desktop tasks but Gnome. It's not
> > perfect but it helps.
>
> Alternatively, many GNOME apps have CSD-free alternatives. MATE's apps
> for example are forks with relatively good feature parity:
> evince -> atril
> file-roller -> engrampa
> eog -> eom
>
> task-xfce-desktop has used MATE apps over GNOME ones for a while now.
Yeah, I harassed the maintainers to make this switch myself. Would be
better for the originals to stop dropping support for non-GNOME, but if we
can't have that, forking is a solution.
> > => If default desktop at install time was not KDE, make QT obey GTK theme?
>
> Installing qt5ct lets you override the theme platform to use GTK+2
> themes, or configure something else e.g. if your preferred theme also
> has a Qt version.
>
> One of the issues with hardcoding QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk across
> sessions is that it conflicts with user settings if they prefer
> something else.[2]
Yeah, I have it set up on my old desktop, and just copied ~ over when
installing another, but that'd be inappropriate for this tiny Pinebook. So
I ended up with no integration between GTK and QT, and this is one of
complaints that pushed me to start this thread.
This should be done by default.
And I don't maintain (just use) GUIs so I don't know what's a good way to
obey user settings. Especially _my_ settings.
> Another complaint I've heard is how many toolkits we should be
> installing in a base system, since adding qt5ct will obviously pull in
> Qt 5. We don't want it to be a hard dependency of any GTK-based desktop
> either, since that's not really the right place.
Meh, I'd say it's not an issue on any screen-attached machine. This
Pinebook is at the very bottom, yet has gobs of space for any system files.
I'd need to start piling up _data_ to possibly exhaust it.
Meow!
--
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