Proper MATE support in Ambiance and Radiance

Development Discussion
#1

Hey everyone,

It’s known that Ubuntu is looking for a new theme to be used in 18.04, which means that Ambiance is no longer going to be the default theme.

Since Ambiance and Radiance don’t seem to work properly in MATE, I was wondering if this could be an opportunity to test and fix it, and if successful, it also could probably benefit Ambiant-mate and Radiant-mate, since they don’t render properly in Unity 7 either. I think it would be interesting to fix both theme families into something consistent across the board, but I don’t know if that’s technically feasible.

BTW, there was a bug opened about this recently: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-themes/+bug/1733707

#2

@Wimpy I had a bit of time today to play around with this, and looks like Ambiant-mate and Ambience issues are complementary and it’s possible to fix compatibility with Unity7 and MATE, respectively, using code from each-other.

To fix Ambiance and Radiance on MATE, here’s what I did:

sudo apt install -y ubuntu-mate-themes ubuntu-mate-artwork light-themes ubuntu-artwork

sudo cp --target-directory=/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.20/apps/ /usr/share/themes/Ambiant-MATE/gtk-3.0/apps/mate-applications.css
sudo cp --target-directory=/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.20/apps/ /usr/share/themes/Ambiant-MATE/gtk-3.0/apps/other-applications.css

sudo tee -a /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.20/gtk-main.css <<EOF
@import url("apps/mate-applications.css");
@import url("apps/other-applications.css");
EOF

sudo cp --target-directory=/usr/share/themes/Radiance/gtk-3.20/apps/ /usr/share/themes/Radiant-MATE/gtk-3.0/apps/mate-applications.css
sudo cp --target-directory=/usr/share/themes/Radiance/gtk-3.20/apps/ /usr/share/themes/Radiant-MATE/gtk-3.0/apps/other-applications.css

sudo tee -a /usr/share/themes/Radiance/gtk-3.20/gtk-main.css <<EOF
@import url("apps/mate-applications.css");
@import url("apps/other-applications.css");
EOF

As for Ambiant-MATE and Radiant-MATE not working properly in Ubuntu 18.04 using Unity, it seems that when these themes were converted to support GTK 3.20, you guys took a different approach from what was done for Ambiance/Radiance, and broke Unity support in the process. One way to fix all of this would be to rebase Ambiant-MATE/Radiant-MATE on current Ambiance/Radiance, while ensuring that doesn’t happen.

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