Re:The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers
by ChocolateGod on Sunday April 20, 2025 @03:50PM
(#43746086)
GTKs CSS engine is great for app developers because it's powerful and easy. You can make something look slick with little work.
But its terrible for themers, it's like running a CSS override on every site that runs Bootstrap and expecting it to work properly. It won't.
I don't run any themes anymore so it doesn't bother me.
Re:The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers
by WD-42 on Sunday April 20, 2025 @03:16PM
(#43745863)
Before css there were engines, which were like families of themes. One of them was the pixmap engine which was what it sounds like: it used images to make up elements of the theme. Some of the most ambitious themes used this engine. CSS didn’t come until much later.
Re:The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers
by cosmic_cheese on Sunday April 20, 2025 @03:21PM
(#43745885)
Yeah I recall having to install engines for some themes. One of them was murrine I think?
Personally I believe CSS to be quite ill-suited for the purpose. It’s ok if you’re writing a theme for a bespoke one-off app but breaks down in the system theme use case. In particular, CSS inheritance makes for a lot of unnecessary trouble for both third-party themes and accessibility affordances.
Last I knew there was something of a disinclination away from paramaterization in the GTK dev sphere too, which is another significant problem for third party themes and accessibility. Hardcoded fonts, colors, etc makes for pointless brittle rigidity.