Gtk4 Theming on Mate 22.04?

Development Discussion
#1

Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-03-29 17-11-57
Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-03-29 17-11-571680×1050 497 KB

Jus a try to look if gtk4 adwaita would support theming. It seems like it is under some conditions.

Adwaita scss was moved inside libadwaita. They did split one big file to more smaller ones. Modularity. However they are just sorted the code a bit differently and did embedd the gtkresource inside a lib. Not that this is very different from how some file managrrs did embedd an vss some time ago.

Tu put it short:
Can mate desktip continue theming or does it follow libadwaita in future? Theming is still possible and it would be even in future i bet.

#2

GTK4 and libadwaita forms are different from each other. You can still theme an application written in GTK4 with existing themes. However, adw forms will be used in GNOME specific applications. In my opinion, since MATE is based on GNOME 2 user interface standards, libadwaita is not used even if applications are transferred to GTK4.

Also, useful applications (like Disk Utility) made for GNOME 3.x should be forked for MATE with the normal menu and titlebar instead of the header bar and the useless appmenu before being ported to the libadwaita.

Additionally, I believe that there will be a method that adapts existing themes to libadwaita in the future.

2 Likes
#3

If i look at gtk4 nd libadwaita i can see that gtk4 theme is very close to gtk3. While the one in libadwaita is restructured. They did reorder the code. But it works almost the same as gtk3 in reality.

All that is needed later is a tool that allows loading custom css inside libadwaita. And that ll happen sooner or later.

#4

Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-12-28
Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-12-281680×1050 341 KB

Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-12-20
Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-12-201680×1050 332 KB

Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-10-33
Bildschirmfoto zu 2022-05-30 19-10-331680×1050 185 KB

While the top themes was created on gnome 40 the one below is for gnome42. With some work its doable under certain conditions. The luna varaint ill have to drop or continue later. Its definitely not as straightforward as we might think.

@Norbert_X
good luck with stwlrt. This libadwaita is very spaghetti coded.

#5

Bildschirmfoto vom 2022-06-03 16-31-08
Bildschirmfoto vom 2022-06-03 16-31-081680×1050 254 KB

Its gnome42. As you can see its more or less fully themeable.
Bildschirmfoto vom 2022-06-03 16-32-50
Bildschirmfoto vom 2022-06-03 16-32-501680×1050 350 KB

What gnome tells us is currently not that true.