[Development] Replacing Cleanlooks and Plastique

[Bache-Wiig Jens]

The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed to blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They have long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms but have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility reasons. We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels included in every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now that we have the opportunity.

For those that want a reminder on what the old styles look like, you can see them here:

Plastique : Loading Image...
Cleanlooks: Loading Image...

There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or if an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets. For that reason, I created a single new style dubbed "Fusion" that I propose could replace both of these two ageing themes. It was not designed to have a strong personality on its own, but rather be a simple and clean alternative to the styles it replaces.

For a quick glance of what it looks like with a few different colour settings, you can have a look at the following screenshot:
Loading Image...

Code is available in https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,34458

I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta. The old styles will of course continue to be usable, but no longer bundled in qtbase itself.

Jens

[Konrad Rosenbaum]

Hi,

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on
all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that
were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed
to blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They
have long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms
but have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility
reasons. We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels
included in every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now
that we have the opportunity.

Those are not obsolete. They still ship with KDE 4, it just uses Oxygen by
default. So I wouldn't call then "non-native", just "less common".

Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is
useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or
if an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets.

Changing color is not the only reason to change the style. There are other
subtle differences - e.g. Cleanlooks displays labels on menu separators and
looks almost completely native on Windows (I use it for exactly those reasons
in one of my applications).

If I just wanted to change colors, I'd use a style sheet.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud
protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta.

Does this count as loud protest?



Konrad

[Frank Hemer]

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Hi,

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on
all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that
were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed
to blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They
have long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms
but have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility
reasons. We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels
included in every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now
that we have the opportunity.

Those are not obsolete. They still ship with KDE 4, it just uses Oxygen by
default. So I wouldn't call then "non-native", just "less common".
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

+1 here

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is
useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or
if an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets.

Changing color is not the only reason to change the style. There are other
subtle differences - e.g. Cleanlooks displays labels on menu separators and
looks almost completely native on Windows (I use it for exactly those
reasons in one of my applications).

Same for me but using plastique in one of my applications - with _many_
addons.

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
If I just wanted to change colors, I'd use a style sheet.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud
protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta.

Does this count as loud protest?

++PROTEST

Frank

[Linos]

Post by Frank Hemer

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Hi,

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on
all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that
were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed
to blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They
have long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms
but have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility
reasons. We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels
included in every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now
that we have the opportunity.

Those are not obsolete. They still ship with KDE 4, it just uses Oxygen by
default. So I wouldn't call then "non-native", just "less common".
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

+1 here

+1 here too

Post by Frank Hemer

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is
useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or
if an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets.

Changing color is not the only reason to change the style. There are other
subtle differences - e.g. Cleanlooks displays labels on menu separators and
looks almost completely native on Windows (I use it for exactly those
reasons in one of my applications).

Same for me but using plastique in one of my applications - with _many_
addons.

I use plastique too in my apps.

Post by Frank Hemer

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
If I just wanted to change colors, I'd use a style sheet.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud
protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta.

Does this count as loud protest?

++PROTEST
Frank
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development

[Nurmi J-P]

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum

Post by Frank Hemer

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is
changing the style to one of those two because I find them more
visually aiding than Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less

"flashy").

Post by Frank Hemer
+1 here

+1 here too

Before everyone rushes up to throw his/her protest on the table, I'd like to invite you take another look at the replacement proposal. I'm getting the feeling that people didn't even take a look at it before protesting the removal of cleanlooks & plastique.

The Fusion style: http://i.imgur.com/kn67x.png

Do you really call that flashy? Don't let the colors fool you, it's just showing off the capabilities of the new fusion style and custom palettes. The idea is to unite cleanlooks & plastique in order to reduce the maintenance burden and refresh the looks to make it look modern, not flashy bling bling.

--
J-P Nurmi

[Linos]

Post by Nurmi J-P

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum

Post by Frank Hemer

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is
changing the style to one of those two because I find them more
visually aiding than Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less

"flashy").

Post by Frank Hemer
+1 here

+1 here too

Before everyone rushes up to throw his/her protest on the table, I'd like to invite you take another look at the replacement proposal. I'm getting the feeling that people didn't even take a look at it before protesting the removal of cleanlooks & plastique.
The Fusion style: http://i.imgur.com/kn67x.png
Do you really call that flashy? Don't let the colors fool you, it's just showing off the capabilities of the new fusion style and custom palettes. The idea is to unite cleanlooks & plastique in order to reduce the maintenance burden and refresh the looks to make it look modern, not flashy bling bling.
--
J-P Nurmi

Actually i like the proposed style, i am not sure if it's better that Plastique
but seems fine for me, the problem it's that with a new style we can have, for
example, new bugs of stylesheets. I am not sure remove the actual working styles
with the first release of Fusion it's a good idea.

Regards,
Miguel Angel.

[Nurmi J-P]

Actually i like the proposed style, i am not sure if it's better that Plastique but
seems fine for me, the problem it's that with a new style we can have, for
example, new bugs of stylesheets. I am not sure remove the actual working
styles with the first release of Fusion it's a good idea.

They must be removed from Qt 5.0. If not, the next chance is Qt 6.0. Naturally KDE or any application may still deploy them if desired. We are looking for options to provide them as easily integratable addons. They just wouldn't be part of the core distribution, and no longer actively maintained (unless someone steps up and volunteers to maintain the addon).

--
J-P Nurmi

[Konstantin Ritt]

I'm +1 on replacing Plastique and Cleanlooks styles in qtbase iff the
replaced styles would remain accessible/usable as add-ons (or a single
add-on, e.g. squashed with recently removed Motif and CDE styles).


Konstantin

Post by Nurmi J-P

Actually i like the proposed style, i am not sure if it's better that Plastique but
seems fine for me, the problem it's that with a new style we can have, for
example, new bugs of stylesheets. I am not sure remove the actual working
styles with the first release of Fusion it's a good idea.

They must be removed from Qt 5.0. If not, the next chance is Qt 6.0. Naturally KDE or any application may still deploy them if desired. We are looking for options to provide them as easily integratable addons. They just wouldn't be part of the core distribution, and no longer actively maintained (unless someone steps up and volunteers to maintain the addon).
--
J-P Nurmi
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development

[Haydania-Capri Hummel]

I'll fourth the motion!

Grab your pitch forks and touches.

Haydania-Capri Hummel
Founder of Oscailt Foundation, Inc.

"It's what you make it; it's fate in your hands not ours..."

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Hemer <***@hemer.org>
Sender: development-bounces+oscailt=***@qt-project.org
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:44:24
To: <***@qt-project.org>
Reply-To: ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] Replacing Cleanlooks and Plastique

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Hi,

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on
all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that
were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed
to blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They
have long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms
but have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility
reasons. We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels
included in every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now
that we have the opportunity.

Those are not obsolete. They still ship with KDE 4, it just uses Oxygen by
default. So I wouldn't call then "non-native", just "less common".
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

+1 here

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is
useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or
if an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets.

Changing color is not the only reason to change the style. There are other
subtle differences - e.g. Cleanlooks displays labels on menu separators and
looks almost completely native on Windows (I use it for exactly those
reasons in one of my applications).

Same for me but using plastique in one of my applications - with _many_
addons.

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
If I just wanted to change colors, I'd use a style sheet.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud
protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta.

Does this count as loud protest?

++PROTEST

Frank
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
***@qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project

[Konstantin Tokarev]

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

+1

[R. Reucher]

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is
changing the style to one of those two because I find them more visually
aiding than Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

+1

I let my users decide, but personally I don't like Oxygen as well (due to the
same reasons). So, count that as +1 ;)!

[Bache-Wiig Jens]

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Those are not obsolete. They still ship with KDE 4, it just uses Oxygen by
default. So I wouldn't call then "non-native", just "less common".

Should we also call Motif and Windows also native KDE styles because they happen to ship with the Qt4 libraries? I think many KDE developers would disagree.

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Call me a hopeless case, but the first thing I do on a fresh KDE is changing
the style to one of those two because I find them more visually aiding than
Oxygen (they have better contrast and are less "flashy").

Yes but we are also adding a new and hopefully improved style. It was designed to look visually cleaner and more consistent than Plastique. Please try to think of it as Plastique 2.0 and look at the screen shots. I think my initial mail was a bit poorly worded. If you still don't like the it, that is certainly a valid point though.

Post by Konrad Rosenbaum
Changing color is not the only reason to change the style. There are other
subtle differences - e.g. Cleanlooks displays labels on menu separators and
looks almost completely native on Windows (I use it for exactly those reasons
in one of my applications).

Agreed. But changing the whole application style to change a single property is perhaps not the best solution for this use case. I would consider using QProxyStyle and only re-implement menu separators. That way the application could still look native on all platforms.

QPlastique style will of course work fine in Qt5, but it might not be shipped on every platform by default. I would be ok with creating a separate qt4styles package that contain the styles we remove so applications can conveniently bundle them when required.


Regards,
Jens

[Alessandro Portale]

Not 100% sure what effective impact it will have for some end-users if
the styles move from qtbase to separate addons. Therefore, my comments
will be purly subjective. Please don't take them too serious :)
Imagine the voice of Karl Lagerfeld speaking out my comments.

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Bache-Wiig Jens

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
The main focus of Qt on the desktop is to provide a native look and feel on
all platforms. Until now, Qt has come bundled with a few extra styles that
were not used intentionally anywhere. Historically plastique was designed to
blend with KDE 3.0 and cleanlooks in early Gnome environments. They have
long since been replaced by Oxygen and GTK+ styles on these platforms but
have been left in our repository for historical and compatibility reasons.
We certainly don't need multiple non-native looks and feels included in
every build of Qt so I think we should clean it up a bit now that we have
the opportunity.
Plastique : http://i.imgur.com/JLuwo.png

Feels like time traveling back to KDE 3 times. I found it chic in
~2006, but in 2008 I already had enough of the concept of simulated
"plastic". Too much distracting high-contrast 3D. Also, I never got
over the varying vertical alignment of texts, like in the screenshot
with PushButton, CheckBox and RadioButton (only CheckBox is correct).

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
Cleanlooks: http://i.imgur.com/VrF05.png

Time travel back to -was it Ubuntu 8 ?-. Fine & fresh style
aesthetically and certainly an acceptable approach to make Qt
applications fit into some Gnome versions of that time with specific
themes. But thanks to the much smarter QGtkStyle, I do not see any
point in keeping CleanLooks in qtbase. Note: regression in slider
handle. Regression in the upper-left corner in the last item in the
TabBar.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
There are still a few use cases where including a non-native theme is
useful. This can be on platforms that don't have a desktop environment or if
an application wants to customise the colours of certain widgets. For that
reason, I created a single new style dubbed "Fusion" that I propose could
replace both of these two ageing themes. It was not designed to have a
strong personality on its own, but rather be a simple and clean alternative
to the styles it replaces.
For a quick glance of what it looks like with a few different colour
http://i.imgur.com/kn67x.png

Refreshing! Up-to-date, discreet, minimalistic (but not exaggerated).
Looks gorgeous in different color settings. I really think this is a
worthy replacement for the other two Qt-specific styles, for the next
3-4 Years.

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
Code is available in https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,34458
I expect it to have some more visual tweaks, but unless there are loud
protests, I would like to have this change in before the next beta. The old
styles will of course continue to be usable, but no longer bundled in qtbase
itself.

+1

PS: Am I missing something, or why do the text underline lines
suddenly have that huge distance?

Post by Bache-Wiig Jens
Jens
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development