I recently conducted a poll on Kdenlive's G+ community page of 182 members. While not exactly conclusive, at this time, 22 of them voted, and 82% preferred the dark theme to the standard breeze theme. Consider having Breeze dark theme the default theme of Kdenlive? Effects: - Can create much more professional and polish presence in the eyes of the users and general public - Darker shades of the UI and contrasting, lighter colors on content & tools focuses the user's eye on the objects of the program, instead of being distracted by the program itself Reproducible: Always Recommendation proposed upon evaluating Kdenlive 15.04.0 on Kubuntu 15.04 x64.
i second this request. also, i use gnome and can't activate the dark theme.
I just fixed the biggest problem with this, because until now, when activating a dark theme for Kdenlive it kept using the Desktop icons. So if you were using a light desktop theme with dark Kdenlive, most icons were invisible, making it impossible to use. My last commit fixes this - forcing the correct breeze icons for Kdenlive independently from the desktop icons. Now I still need to figure out a way to allow dark themes on non KDE desktops but that's already a good step towards this goal.
> Now I still need to figure out a way to allow dark themes on non KDE > desktops but that's already a good step towards this goal. maybe you could make the breeze icons a dependency... this could fix this bug: 351695
Great to hear, JB, that users can now easily switch between Breeze and Breeze dark (tested in latest kubuntu-ci ppa build). I like it! That said, I guess my initial post was to consider if the Breeze dark theme should be the active theme after the user installs Kdenlive the first time. In other words, if the breeze dark theme is the default/initial theme of Kdenlive. I put a side-by-side image together comparing the two: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jyrwe4ti5xbhyo5/kdenlive_breeze_breezedark_comparison.png?dl=0. With the standard breeze theme, the dominance of the white space in the entire layout can make it considerably difficult to navigate around Kdenlive in a timely manner, simply because the controls aren't really standing out (the light object will immediately grab for the user's attention, like the different between lighting a highway billboard during the day, and lighting it at night -- it will stand out much more against a dark environment). I see a significant change in ease of use when switching to the dark theme because, like the metaphor above, it makes the functions stand out much easier. Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and many others use dark themes by default, and with good reason (Sony Vegas, I believe, being one of the only differences). So that was really the point behind the original post: should Breeze Dark be the default theme of Kdenlive, independent of any color or theme selection for the desktop?My vote is undoubtedly yes.
Git commit 2a41dae380b7504dc682e810303a7436e094c804 by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle. Committed on 22/09/2015 at 22:46. Pushed by mardelle into branch 'master'. * Make sure non KDE users can always get a dark color theme * Use dark theme by default Please test and give me feedback M +1 -0 data/CMakeLists.txt A +105 -0 data/KdenliveBreezeDark.colors M +29 -2 src/utils/thememanager.cpp http://commits.kde.org/kdenlive/2a41dae380b7504dc682e810303a7436e094c804
Created attachment 94684 [details] Kdenlive 15.08.1 with Breeze Dark theme on Gnome
Created attachment 94685 [details] Kdenlive 15.08.1 with Breeze theme on Gnome
check out the two images i submitted, they are taken from gnome. notice some missing icons, as well as some theme bugs that makes things unreadable. also kdenlive uses the icon theme of my desktop instead of the breeze icons (which imo is not good).
Created attachment 94686 [details] Screenshot GNOME 3.16 Arch My shot at it. I don't even get icons when I choose breeze dark. Furthermore this client side decorations are just not my thing. The title bar is just too large. The Gnome guys better think this one over...
Wow, thanks for your screenshots. In fact I made some tests and it seems like getting a dark theme for a KDE application in a non dark Gnome Desktop is almost impossible. The widget style doesn't correctly display dark colors, requires special tweaks and not sure it can even work... So I will wait a few more days to think about it but I will probably revert the default dark theme because it will make Kdenlive unusable on Gnome.
Good point. I wasn't exactly considering the theming across different desktop environments. It's a little too easy, as a non-developer, to forget how many other factors there are that need to be considered in a change. :) Would it be possible to set default dark theme for those running Plasma, exclusively? Or would that not be ideal?
Just giving some raw data to stew on: I posted a recent poll this morning to KDE's G+ community (12,000 members) on which Breeze them they use primarily? So far, 150 votes in, and 51% are on the dark theme (https://plus.google.com/+JDRichards/posts/8UzGXHVj6Vk). Not saying it suggests one way or the other, but knowing the audience can always help!
Hi Jesse, If we take your poll in the kdenlive g+ community it is a clear win for breeze dark (80:20) https://plus.google.com/+JDRichards/posts/5kZCQc2REzc In my opinion breeze dark should be the default in kdenlive. It's the first thing I change when I start a new installation. Cheers! P.S.: Thanks J-B for your effort! The Gnome guys really need to come up with a proper way to integrate other apps in their environment.
> P.S.: Thanks J-B for your effort! The Gnome guys really need to come up with > a proper way to integrate other apps in their environment. @Paul your rants about gnome in the thread are not helpful, so maybe keep them to yourself, or help with the solution. @jbm and @jesse maybe the white default makes more sense at this moment in time. cheers :)
Let's keep it friendly, fellas. There's always room for improvement from every angle. :) JB, no sweat if it's not ideal at this time. We can now easily switch to the dark theme with your implementation of the breeze dark icons with Kdenlive, and that's more than worthy of being grateful for. Maybe we can revisit this prospect in a few more future releases down the road.
@farid I'm not ranting. Sorry it came across that way. It's just my experience that the integration works better one way than the other (i.e. gimp in KDE). The fact that I'm no programmer limits my potential to be of immediate impact on this matter but I still try to help every other way I can. Anyway, like Jesse said, let's keep it friendly.
> Anyway, like Jesse said, let's keep it friendly. totally agree :) cheers
just saw that krita got ported to qt5 and kf5 as well: http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2015/09/24#porting-done maybe we could see with them how they are dealing with this issue and try to find a common solution. cheers
Good idea. Lightworks also has a consistent theme across all three platforms (Mac, Win, Linux). Maybe there's a way we can do the same? Maybe someone else has done it?
Created attachment 95710 [details] Kdenlive 15.11.80 on Ubuntu GNOME 15.10
Take a look at the attachment I posted above. This is Kdenlive with Breeze dark theme running on Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 w/ GNOME 3.16 installed, exclusively. Not sure if anything changed, but this looks pretty darn good to me.
i had to even install the plasma desktop since it is a dependency of kdenlive. i got more themes but all the dark ones look really bad. see my latest attachment.
Created attachment 95719 [details] Kdenlive 15.08.3 with zion-reversed theme
Oh come on, Farid, that's not an eyesore to work with at all. ;) (Note the sarcasm... haha)
Actually changing the theme things get better, so this is probably a user generated issue... the default gnome theme adwaita and numix themes look nasty, the arc theme looks good.
Created attachment 95827 [details] kdenlive with gtk arc theme
Just brainstorming here, it might be the best option to have the themes, icons, etc. included, somehow, within the program itself, without having to rely on external libraries, icon sets, and the like. (Again, I'm speaking from an ignorant, non-developer point of view.) Three questions arise: 1. Is it possible? 2. Is it a good idea? 3. Would it be a lot of work to implement?
(In reply to Jesse from comment #27) > Just brainstorming here, it might be the best option to have the themes, > icons, etc. included, somehow, within the program itself, without having to > rely on external libraries, icon sets, and the like. (Again, I'm speaking > from an ignorant, non-developer point of view.) > > Three questions arise: 1. Is it possible? 2. Is it a good idea? 3. Would it > be a lot of work to implement? the icons will be included in the 15.12 release, as for the themes, i may be wrong, but i think the two light and dark breeze themes suffice... there is an option to install more themes from within kdenlive but non kde users must have the plasma desktop installed.
@farid, definitely, the two Breeze themes provided are more than great. Most of the icons seem there on non-KDE desktop environments. However, the "configure Kdenlive" window doesn't seem to show the icons on the left column. At least, I think there were icons there when running Kubuntu. Do you have them on yours? Are you saying that - on Ubuntu - installing the "plasma-workspace" package will make Kdenlive look like it does on Kubuntu or any KDE Plasma distro?
> Most of the icons seem there on non-KDE desktop environments. However, the > "configure Kdenlive" window doesn't seem to show the icons on the left > column. At least, I think there were icons there when running Kubuntu. Do > you have them on yours? i can confirm that it is using the system icons instead of the breeze ones. you should definitely post a bug report to maybe try to fix it before release in case there is time. > Are you saying that - on Ubuntu - installing the "plasma-workspace" package > will make Kdenlive look like it does on Kubuntu or any KDE Plasma distro? i cannot say that about the theme honestly have to do more tests... but some functionality is missing if you dont have plasma-desktop, so far i have found that the theme configuration needs it. (which is a bummer for non kde users to install imho.) will get back to you about the theme issue soon...
Interesting: On Ubuntu running GNOME 3.16, though the theme in Kdenlive itself is set to Breeze Dark (which makes the colors look right), the tabs and other ui features still look like - I guess - the standard Qt design. I found on a forum that you can edit the Qt theme by adding a " -style=breeze" or " -style=gtk" at the end of running the program in Terminal or Konsole. Sure enough, I gave it a try, and it works! The tabs, title bars, and other various ui components look exactly like they do in Plasma. Can anyone else confirm this effect by running "kdenlive -style=breeze" and see if it changes anything for you?
Created attachment 96000 [details] Screenshot Gnome 3.18 Arch Jesse, I think you nailed it ;) Looks exactly like native with "kdenlive -style=breeze" So a workaround is a launcher with this custom parameter. Is it possible to detect the running DE to set this at launch time?
Most excellent, Paul! :) @JB, I read on the forums that this was some Qt5 parameter (since the "qt4-config" package in Ubuntu repo's won't work with Qt5 apps). If the Breeze dark theme and icons are now built into the program, is it possible to use this somehow to have Qt choose this style when loading the program?
@Jesse, nice one!!! All the issues i had with different gnome themes as posted above are fixed.
On Arch Linux with recent mlt git and kdenlive git, kdenlive crashes when I change to one of the two dark breeze themes: http://codepad.org/8dmgshFl
> On Arch Linux with recent mlt git and kdenlive git, kdenlive crashes when I change to one of the two dark breeze themes: > http://codepad.org/8dmgshFl Sorry, I wasn't thinking straight. This only happens when movit is enabled with an AMD HD 7750 graphics card. It does work when disabling gpu accelerated playback.
j-b-m, can you confirm that this solution works for you as well? If so, wouldn't that make it possible to have the Breeze dark theme enabled by default on most current GNU/Linux (non-KDE desktop) distributions while still keeping the look of Kdenlive as if it was on a KDE-based distro?
Side note: I would like to suggest that both dark and light themes are included in Kdenlive, notwithstanding which one is the default one.
I just commited a change in master adding a "Style" option in the Settings menu. This will allow you to select the widget style (best option is Breeze). The setting will be remembered on restart. Now I am not sure I want to embed icons, color themes, and widget styles inside Kdenlive (I don't think widget styles can easily be embeded). Reason for this is that we would need to maintain our own copy of these and we don't really need extra work. I think it is reasonable to have Kdenlive depend on some KDE packages. Currently, I think you need to install the kde-style-breeze and breeze-icon-theme packages to have it work. So currently, my idea is that users will need to install these 2 packages. We now have an easy way to select color theme and widget style so having a correct look is just 2 clicks away now :) I still need to figure if there is a way to auto detect that a user is not on a KDE session so that we can automatically switch to Breeze style on first run, and then we will be able to have a dark theme by default if we want.
I agree. That sounds great, sir! :)
the new style parameter fixes all the problems i was experiencing in gnome. so i wouldn't mind if this becomes the default ;)
Will this also allow selecting any of the other native KDE icon sets? I really much, much prefer the Oxygen icons, they make the workflow faster because I can identify icons quicker when they're not monochrome. (Not to mention that Kdenlive now sticks out as a sore thumb among other KF5 apps, that happily make use of the Oxygen setting.)
I am currently not satisfied with the icon situation, here are some details: Due to a Qt bug, setting an icon theme per application was not possible. This is problematic when user has a light color theme on Desktop but wants to use Kdenlive with a dark theme, because the icons were using not visible against a dark background. So I used a hack, embedding all icons inside Kdenlive, and allowing us to use our own icons. In Qt 5.5, the problem was fixed and it is possible to define an icon theme per application. But Qt 5.5. is still not widely used. When it becomes more mainstream, I will change the way we handle icons to use the system icons, and switching dark / light themes with color themes. When this will be implemented, this should allow more flexibility with icon themes. However you need to be aware that several icons we use are not in the oxygen theme, so you might end up with a mix of breeze/oxygen, unless you contribute the missing icons in oxygen theme... Hope this clarifies a bit the icon situation.
Yes, thanks. That's good to know and good to hear. I'm not too concerned with a few specialised icons being mismatched; after all, it's the common ones that you end up pressing the most.
Seems like there have been great leaps and strides towards making this possible: being able to customize the them and style from the Settings menu, application-managed icons (or at least able to set the icons independent of the desktop). I wonder if it's possible (if considered best) that we might see the dark theme as the default in the final 16.04 release? I think we know of some possible issues, but I don't know if they've been resolved: (1) Packages "breeze" and "breeze-icons" have to be installed in order for Breeze Dark to even be an option for Kdenlive. Could one possible solution be to set those two packages as a dependency required for installation? I'd imagine that most distros have them available, yeah?) (2) JB said that there should (needs to?) be a way to auto-detect if a user is running a non-KDE session so that the style can be automatically switched to Breeze Dark on the first run. However, if the Breeze package is installed by default along with Kdenlive, would that make this possible? Or, if the Fusion style (which I believe is available in Qt5 by default?) is able to be set as default (which looks pretty darn close to the Breeze style), would that make setting Breeze the default necessary? (3) Are icons an issue anymore? (Wegerf has been making some very neat icons for Kdenlive, by the way.)
Created attachment 99446 [details] No icons without oxygen-icons installed.
Comment on attachment 99446 [details] No icons without oxygen-icons installed. Shouldn't Breeze icons suffice? Or you need both? This should be clear for packagers
I added breeze-icons as a dependency for the git versions of kdenlive, following the discussion above, so the default should at least look good on Arch. I do not maintain the package in common, but the fix for Arch is pretty easy. Install breeze icons. In the end, this is a KDE app, that uses KF5 and KDE themes... if you insist on using another desktop, you still have to install the bits that this application was designed for.
I wonder what everyone's thoughts are on the progress of this? Is it possibly ready by the 16.08 release, or does it need more time to perfect? What's left to do?
17.04, then? :)
Just spoke with the KDE_VDG team and there is no HIG guideline about using the dark theme as default. (One will be written soon.) Basically as long as the user can set the white theme back to default (or whatever one chooses), it is alright to set the dark theme to be default.
Awesome! Thanks so much for checking on that, Farid.
Git commit 00ff22d632e2d047af12ec570aba8bb91c31fb1a by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle. Committed on 15/11/2016 at 21:10. Pushed by mardelle into branch 'master'. Use breeze dark color theme on first start if available and default theme is breeze M +4 -1 src/dialogs/wizard.cpp M +13 -1 src/utils/thememanager.cpp M +5 -3 src/utils/thememanager.h http://commits.kde.org/kdenlive/00ff22d632e2d047af12ec570aba8bb91c31fb1a
I can confirm this works on a fresh install of Kdenlive! Awesome! However, the Breeze style is not set as the default -- is it possible to set Breeze as the default style as well?
UPDATE: the dark theme is default so long as Breeze is installed. Without it, color scheme defaults to a light scheme. I don't think I'm writing anything everybody doesn't already know, but luckily the first-time wizard shows when Breeze packages aren't installed (on distros like Arch, for example) after installing Kdenlive. While I, personally, believe brand recognition should be constant wherever possible, I understand that some distros don't like unnecessary dependencies as a requirement to install certain things, and I respect where they're coming from. All that to say, two things would be needed to close this bug: 1. Have Dark Theme by default when Breeze is installed (done) 2. Have Breeze style as default when program starts the first time (before user customization).
Implemented in Kdenlive version 16.12