Reduce number of Boron themes?

johnraff · 2023-08-20 05:37:22

I totally get how it's good to throw out all kinds of options at the early stage, but now that Boron release is getting near, I wonder if we could cut down on the number of Boron themes in bunsen-themes?

ATM there are 7:

Boron-aqua  Boron-dark   Boron-light-aqua  Boron-moss Boron-blue  Boron-light  Boron-light-moss

and each one is ~10MB, making for a rather chubby package.

As a minimum, we'll need the default light and dark themes: Boron-light-aqua and Boron-darkred

(Boron-darkred doesn't exist yet, but I'm presuming it would be easy to make from eg Boron-aqua by doing a search-and-replace for #53A0B3 replacing with #BD423F, and that you'd be OK with doing that. https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 25#p128925 )

Any of the others you'd especially like to keep?

Possibly keep vanilla Boron-dark and Boron-light too?

For that matter, maybe some of the older ones could go too?
I'd think of Be-Penguin, Be-Penguin-light, Crocus-remix, RainForest and Softwaves, but the early ones are very small so no big deal. Just the Penguins would cut 4.4 MB.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-08-20 06:33:41)

johnraff · 2023-09-29 05:38:26

Since Bunsen-dark is a bit tricky with checkboxes right now, we could consider keeping just Boron-light-aqua and Boron-darkred?

Then maybe trim the other themes down to just those that are used in a BLOB set?
(Possibly keep Beam-HiDPI as a reference?)

Boron-Light-Aqua
Boron-Darkred
Beryllium (uses Dragon)
Lithium
Lithium_Light_Vertical
Yeti
Yeti-Lith
Helium_Beam
Helium_Flatish_Grey
BL-Fever_Room
Crunchbang (uses Bunsen-he)

Perhaps one of Yeti or Yeti-Lith BLOBs could go too? They aren't so different.
I'm not a fan of BL-Fever_Room either TBH, but others might like it and it's nice to have a memento of Damo.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-10-01 05:04:17)

hhh · 2023-09-29 08:44:00

I'd keep Fever Room, to honour Damo, and lose Yeti-Lith, so we still have one of Will's themes.

johnraff · 2023-09-30 04:00:21

hhh wrote:

I'd keep Fever Room, to honour Damo, and lose Yeti-Lith, so we still have one of Will's themes.

Sounds good.

And let's issue bunsen-themes-extra (not on the default install list) to hold the others. Easily done.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-09-30 04:08:30)

hhh · 2023-09-30 05:26:29

re: the other thread, I'm fine with light-aqua being default, and I like the idea of bunsen-themes-extra so you can just install the deb if you don't want to download the repo and install individual themes. Cheers!

johnraff · 2023-10-01 05:21:11

johnraff wrote:

...let's issue bunsen-themes-extra (not on the default install list) to hold the others. Easily done.

Done: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=8699

johnraff · 2023-10-11 07:49:37

hhh wrote:

Not sure if I mentioned it, the default login theme should be Boron-aqua (dark, it fixes the panel text and just looks better than the light theme).

johnraff wrote:

^OK thanks!
...and yes that does look better.

I took out the Boron-aqua theme from bunsen-themes because it wasn't being used (discussion above) and just noticed with the Beta 2 builds that the login theme defaults to light again because Boron-aqua is missing. When you see it, try setting the login theme to Boron-darkred. The only difference with Boron-aqua is that the 1px line round the password box is dark red, but it's barely noticable (to me) and not worth shipping another 10MB theme to get Boron-aqua just for that, is it? (If your eyes disagree and would prefer the emerald border, I won't block shipping Boron-aqua.) Changing the config file to Boron-darkred would be very easy so no problem getting it in the official build anyway.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-10-11 07:55:40)

hhh · 2023-10-11 09:27:39

I'd definitely love it if Boron-aqua was included, at least with the amd64 ISO. It's the theme I used most when I first upgraded to Debian 12 and it's the first one I built around the Emerald wallpaper, hence my naming scheme of Boron-aqua and Boron-aqua-light, Boron-blue and Boron-blue-light, etc...

Now that I'm regularly booting into Boron again, I'll admit that I'm pretty bummed out that Boron-aqua isn't the default theme. The current default looks great, but to my eye the dark themes look much better, and Boron-aqua with the Emerald wallpaper looks stunning. You use darkred, wait till I give you a Ruby wallpaper.

If we stay with a light default theme, the matching tint2 systray configs need some tweaking. For example, if you install the bluetooth packages and login to the updated desktop, the default deactivated bluetooth systray icon is nearly invisible.

Regarding the login theme, a light theme just does not look good there IMO. And switching to darkred via Blob is a perfect example... the login-screen theme sticks out like a sore thumb, even if you enter your password in Blob to authorize the login change. Logout and eye-bleed city! Login, switch the login theme via Login Interface to darkred, logout... Dracula!

Anyway, these are fairly trivial things to me, and they're items that we can discuss in the public forum. I think you've done amazing work and I'm looking forward to the release!

hhh · 2023-10-11 09:33:53

BTW, I'm really sorry that I didn't bring this up sooner. I didn't really realize the implications of everything until booting this latest ISO.

johnraff · 2023-10-11 09:57:18

Wow, I completely misread your intentions about theming.

When you posted the light theme quite some time ago I thought that was what you wanted for default, to go with vertical tint2, round corners and menu icons as an exciting break from Beryllium and Lithium. And that was why I threw in the darkred theme with horizontal tint2 and no menu icons as a dark counter-alternative. (Looking again yesterday I found the red folder icons still a bit too bright. If we continued to ship Boron-darkred I'd quite like to darken that red a bit more.)

We got good feedback from users about the new desktop on the whole, but I don't see why we couldn't switch default theme to Boron-aqua. It would put release back a bit, but doable. Would that count as a light or dark theme? The emerald wallpaper is pretty light.

Sure, lets discuss this in the public Development forum and get some user feedback. I don't think the choice of default theme is trivial at all, but extremely important. If we can get things looking right, let's make a Beta 3 with the revised theming. Not hard to do.

---
For Carbon, maybe we can get the graphics stack decided earlier in the development flow...

Last edited by johnraff (2023-10-11 11:05:38)

johnraff · 2023-10-11 11:12:25

More than tint2 I think a few icons need attention. Numix doesn't ship light and dark variants for everything and yes there are cases where with a light or dark theme an icon is hard to see. We need to make the missing variant but I don't think there are too many for our needs, just two or three maybe.

Another complication is that while tab icons are changed immediately tint2 doesn't update the systray icons even if you restart it. You have to logout/in to see the result of an icon theme change (caching?). Hence some weirdness after a switch with BLOB. I don't think anything can be done about that - users certainly wouldn't enjoy being forced to logout automatically after doing a BLOB theme change.

hhh · 2023-10-11 11:40:39

I didn't mean trivial to implement, I meant trivial to me, as in I won't be offended no matter what the default theme is!

re: Icon cache, I'm about to test this (have to reboot again ) ...

sudo update-icon-caches /usr/share/icons/*

-edit- I don't think that worked. It's definitely a cache issue, Boron includes the package gtk-update-icon-cache. I'm looking at search results and the solutions aren't working while in a session...

https://devicetests.com/refresh-icon-cache-ubuntu

Last edited by hhh (2023-10-11 12:02:06)

hhh · 2023-10-11 12:05:20

Hey did you implement a fix for the login panel when using a light theme? If so, nice!

johnraff · 2023-10-12 04:24:19

hhh wrote:

I didn't mean trivial to implement, I meant trivial to me, as in I won't be offended no matter what the default theme is!

And I didn't mean "important" as in "a lot of work to do" either! I meant that I think the theming is important to the whole concept of BunsenLabs. Along with menu arrangement, widgets like tint2, dmenu, composition settings... the whole GUI in fact. The simple, elegant Graphical User Interface was one of CrunchBang's main strengths IMO and continues to be "extremely important" for BunsenLabs. Without that, we'd be just any hacker's collection of favourite tools.

re: Icon cache, I'm about to test this (have to reboot again ) ...
sudo update-icon-caches /usr/share/icons/*
-edit- I don't think that worked. It's definitely a cache issue, Boron includes the package gtk-update-icon-cache. I'm looking at search results and the solutions aren't working while in a session...

I didn't mean the regular GTK icon caching. (You can trigger another GTK refresh from the menu with User Settings > Reload GTK.) I was talking about why, when the icon theme is changed, tint2 didn't refresh the icons in the systray even after a restart, and after xsettingsd had been restarted. If you log out and back in again, the tint2 systray icons are correct. That's why I wondered (without knowing anything about it) whether tint2 itself was caching the icons somewhere. I can't think of any other explanation.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-10-12 04:54:36)

johnraff · 2023-10-12 04:43:54

Login panel with Boron-darkred:

With Boron-aqua:

OK I'd have to agree that the aqua version looks nicer, though to me it's a pretty subtle difference, and I'd let it go if we weren't going to use Boron-aqua anyway. The fact that you (@hhh) find that difference annoying just shows how unqualified I am to make decisions about Graphics.

Hey did you implement a fix for the login panel when using a light theme? If so, nice!

I haven't changed anything. Here's the login panel with Boron-light-aqua:

It's OK, but I agree with you that the dark login panel looks nicer.

johnraff · 2023-10-12 05:01:45

I think there's a quick way forward here:
*) Keep the two BLOB themesets we've already got, Boron-Light-Aqua (current default) and Boron-darkred (with Ruby wallpaper if you have time) .
*) Make a new theme set Boron-Aqua using the dark Boron-aqua theme + boron-dark-vertical.tint2rc + Numix-Bunsen-Circle-aqua icons, make it the new default desktop and also add it to the BLOB collection.

So there will be three alternative BLOBs - the current ones will continue to be available - but a new dark aqua one will be added and become default. Most of the work has already been done.

Maybe the dark tint2 needs a little work to make it more visible on the emerald wallpaper?

Here's a quick view in my small 32bit VM:

No composition here, sorry. The 32bit system is quicker to startup and run (starts on 400MB RAM), but you get the general idea anyway. I had to logout to get the light-colored icons in tint2. Note there's only one power icon for both light and dark - that's one we might consider adding.

Is that something like what you have in mind?

hhh · 2023-10-12 23:35:49

^ That's great!

johnraff · 2023-10-13 04:01:28

^Sorry about the white frame - I forgot to switch the OB theme.

Can you have a look at tints2's boron-dark-vertical.tint2rc and see if it can be a little bit more visible?
https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-co … al.tint2rc

johnraff · 2023-10-13 07:31:38

Boron-aqua is now in the default bunsen-themes so you can use it without having to install bunsen-themes-extra.
Just do an apt upgrade.

PS the menu icons look much cooler in the dark theme using the dark icon set.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-10-13 07:35:19)

hhh · 2023-10-13 10:23:54

^ Yeah, that menu looks bloody brilliant! I'll take a look at your tint2 after coffee.

#1 2023-08-20 05:37:22

Reduce number of Boron themes?

#2 2023-09-29 05:38:26

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#3 2023-09-29 08:44:00

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#4 2023-09-30 04:00:21

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#5 2023-09-30 05:26:29

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#6 2023-10-01 05:21:11

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#7 2023-10-11 07:49:37

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#8 2023-10-11 09:27:39

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#9 2023-10-11 09:33:53

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#10 2023-10-11 09:57:18

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#11 2023-10-11 11:12:25

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#12 2023-10-11 11:40:39

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#13 2023-10-11 12:05:20

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#14 2023-10-12 04:24:19

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#15 2023-10-12 04:43:54

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#16 2023-10-12 05:01:45

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#17 2023-10-12 23:35:49

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#18 2023-10-13 04:01:28

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#19 2023-10-13 07:31:38

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

#20 2023-10-13 10:23:54

Re: Reduce number of Boron themes?

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