Responsible commit

https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=plasma-desktop.git&a=commit&h=35bfaf2978ce4e24c07238b0230dd48b2ac6b566

I'm sorry but most of the settings in there are broken, obsolete or superfluous. Can you elaborate which settings you need, so we could come up with a sufficient solution?

Sorry, I didn't fully read your comment. :)

Rather than allowing the user to mix and match random parts of random themes, I suggest we rather have a dedicated setting for the transparency/background contrast. Also, I think there's plans to make Plasma follow the regular icon theme. Furthermore, I have a patch locally to allow Analog Clock to choose a clock face from any installed theme.

The feature to apply a customised theme with elements chosen from several different ones works, is not obsolete and is certainly not superfluous.

e.g. example here where the default Breeze dark elements for icons, panel background, task items etc have been switched for more visually useful ones which work better in my user case.

http://i.imgur.com/rAbxYuk.png

The ability to customise things such as this and get your desktop working for you is one of KDE/plasma's biggest + points and is a major reason why I use use it. Unnecessarily removing useful customisation features is a very backward step.

> Rather than allowing the user to mix and match random parts of random themes, I suggest we rather have a dedicated setting for the transparency/background contrast. Also, I think there's plans to make Plasma follow the regular icon theme. Furthermore, I have a patch locally to allow Analog Clock to choose a clock face from any installed theme.

That would be great, but I still want to be able to mix/match theme element to get something that works better for me.

Otherwise I'm going to have to hack together the svg elements from several different themes manually, rather than the simple process of just selecting different ones via KCM.

If I wanted my desktop to constantly remove useful features and make my life difficult, I would use Gnome. :P

@FBrown I totally agree with you. Right now i am thinking about changing my Desktop environment which makes me really sad, because i love KDE. But they are removing so many good parts of it, that i am thinkin about XFCE....:(

*** Bug 360742 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

@Florian Röhrer Yes, KDE/plasma is fast losing the good features and those that one made it stand out.

@Kai Uwe Broulik The feature was NOT broken, as I used and use it often in <= plasma 5.5. Maybe a bit buggy, but that is something to fix perhaps, an no excuse for it's extermination.

For me the feature also always worked like a charm. I never encountered any problems with it. I would really like to know why you think there was something broken on it Kai Uwe Broulik? Also i have to point out: If a feature is superfluous for YOU Kai Uwe Broulik, it does not mean it is for other people...Maybe it would be better to just fix the many many bugs in Plasma 5 then to remove good features that work just fine...Just my 2 cents. I am quite sure other users are of the same opinion.

Please watch your language. Feel free to step up as a maintainer. Fact is, this thing hasn't seen any love in quite some time and most of its settings were broken or didn't work.

I agree there are some theme options that are useful but they must be made part of Plasma's theming capabilities and not like the details KCM which randomly mixed and matched parts from other themes and copied files around to create a new theme...

Ok, then which setting did not work? I am really curious. 
I don't get what you mean by "watch your language". I did not insult anyone and was not rude in any kind. I just pointed out my opinion.

All work/worked here on multiple machines. Occasionally  there are some instances of changes failing to apply or show the updated choice, but try again and it invariably works.

Color Scheme - breaks background contrast effect, and also in 5.6 Plasma themes can follow the system color scheme allowing you to use *any* color combination rather than a random selection of the installed themes.
Panel Background - doesn't work
Kickoff - doesn't work
Task items - breaks Task Manager
Widget background - kinda works but renders broken
Translucent background - didn't have an applet that uses that
Dialog background - doesn't work
Analog clock - works but this should rather be in the applet's settings rather than globally for the theme
Sticky notes - doesn't work
Tooltips - doesn't work
Pager - doesn't work
Run command - doesn't work
Logout dialog - doesn't work and cannot as the logout dialog comes from the Look and Feel package in Plasma 5 rather than the theme
Icons - changes the system tray icons but not those that come from the icon theme as it does not change the system icon theme

Now I ended up with a completely broken desktop with the background contrast effect broken no matter what I do. So, no, this thing is just broken beyond repair. And yes, I did restart Plasma and nuked the caches everytime I changed something. Sorry.

My experience with Plasma 5.5.5

Panel Background - works fine 
Kickoff - works fine  
Task items - works fine (some themes incompatible with some panel backgrounds , but that is the price of choice, and this has always bee the way)
Widget background - works fine 
Translucent background - works fine last time I used one that did
Dialog background - works fine 
Analog clock - never use
Sticky notes - fine
Tooltips - works fine 
Pager - works fine  
Run command - works fine 
Logout dialog - works fine (some theme incompatible, but that is the price of choice, and this has always bee the way)
Icons - works fine, an allows you to get rid of most of the awful Breeze ones

Has always been the way that if you are going to mix and match some theme element, they will not always play nicely with each other. That has has been the case for the entire of plasma 4-5, and as said it's a price that has always been the case with this feature. It is not something new or startling.

I never and still don't ever ended up with a COMPLETELY broken desktop.

I also have just checked the whole list you postet in a virtual machine wich has this feature because i did not update it. The only thing of it which really does not work ist the logout dialog. Al the other things work fine...

(In reply to Florian Röhrer from comment #15)
>The only thing of it which really does not work ist the logout dialog. Al the other things work fine...

In that case, you just leave that at the default or other working choice. 

You can pick and choose what looks/works best for you, which is the point of this feature.

I agree. Also one not working setting is no reason to remove the whole feature

For example what I am using at the moment is mostly Breeze, but as some element are a bit ugly or lack transparency they are swapped out for something else.

- Panel Background - swapped for a more purely transparent version from another theme
- Task items - similarly swapped for more transparent ones with not as prominent borders.
- Systray icons - swapped to a more pre-Breeze style, as the Breeze ones are not as intuitive as previous ones.

That is quite minimal compared to what I may have done in the past, but I have experimented with changing more, and have certainly not managed to 'break the desktop' as Kai Uwe Broulik implies is going to be the case.

I also experimented a lot with this feature and i really do not understand how one is able to break the desktop. 
Kai Uwe Broulik, don't get me wrong, i read your blog sometimes and usually you really do a great job but i simply do not understand the decision to remove this feature.

And what's the problem with just downloading a transparent theme on kde-looks? There's even a "Breeze Transparent" which does exactly that. There's also a theme with that plus the old tray icons...

What does the "Kickoff" option even do? Or the pager or Run Command?

> I never and still don't ever ended up with a COMPLETELY broken desktop.

Even partially is unacceptable, especially that going back to a vanilla state is completely unintitive with this UI...

I use a mixture of the Breeze-dark Theme and the Velours Theme from kde-look.org and this really looks awesome for me. There is no Theme available which really meets my requirements more.

Feel free to continue the discussion over in the review request, a bug tracker is not the right place for this: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/126953/

As you can see it has been accepted by people from all involved parties (Usability, Visual Design and Plasma developers), including the original author of this module. Again, I'm not saying that we don't want to have customizability there, I can see that some people might prefer a more translucent look of Breeze but the way the details KCM worked just wasn't up to the standards we have set for Plasma 5.

(In reply to Florian Röhrer from comment #21)
> I use a mixture of the Breeze-dark Theme and the Velours Theme from
> kde-look.org and this really looks awesome for me. There is no Theme
> available which really meets my requirements more.

Similar here. There is no alternative on KDE-look that does the job for me, but I can achieve it very simply with this feature

(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #20)
> Even partially is unacceptable, 

Has always been the case. It's not something new.

> especially that going back to a vanilla  state is completely unintitive with this UI...

Never had the slightest problem, as seems perfectly intuitive here. you just select something other than the customised theme.

(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #22)
> but the way the details KCM worked just wasn't up
> to the standards we have set for Plasma 5.

I can see that, as seems the standards to be set are a constant lowering of the bar.

Apologies for that ^^^^^^

It is frustration talking.

I shall make one more comment that +1s from Plasma developers/designers who are invested greatly in the current look and feel, are not exactly indicative a what a larger user base may want or think.

I do thank everyone for the efforts in plasma 5 though. As said, if necessary I will hack together my own modifies version of the default theme. It just seems a huge shame and point missed on having to do that when there is a simple alternative.

Thank you

I agree that this is not the right place for this discussion. But nevertheless i want to finish this discussion by answering your questions from above Kai. I always have changed all the setting that i wanted to change on together. I have just tried to change them separately and you are right, the Kickoff as well as the run command option does not change anything but kickoff and run command use the option for dialog background. All the other settings can be chosen separately. So it would have been possible to just remove the non working options and leave the rest untouched (or just fix the non working parts)

I never had an in any kind broken desktop. And as i sad before: There is no theme which fits my needs...

And Kai...As i also already sad before: I don't want you to be pissed of, usually you do a great job, as the whole team of KDE. Thank you for that. Sorry if that was not clear enough.

I'm joining the discussion because for me missing of those features is a big step back.

Most of themes that are said to be transparent add it only slightly and for me they are no go. Only ones available for TRUE transparency were Diamond and Polished Stones, however they're were elements in them that weren't working well for me:
- diamond adds white border to windows manager in desktop panel and the whole look is not flat and obsolete,
- polished stones adds ugly, green icons and fonts on panel bar
- both use kubuntu icon kickstarter while I use manjaro and prefer to have manjaro icon (far better looking)

The removed feature allowed me to mix manjaro's default flat them Maia with diamond's elements to create exactly the flat, glassy, modern look I want and LOVE!

Now the feature is gone and in the future if I wanted to change the look I would be stuck with different/ugly/unfitting kickstarter (most themes use default - kubuntu's one) and lot of other effects I dislike.

Sure, the feature of advanced theme mixing was a bit buggy but with some experimentation one was able to achieve desired effect that works well.

Why not just give a little love to that feature rather then removing it? It was very useful! This was one of the biggest features I loved about kde, I could customize it in the inside (how it works) and outside (how it looks). Now it's like the half of it was gone. My feeling is, we're going in the direction of gnome. What is the point of KDE existing if not being extremely customable and a complete opposite to gnome philosophy? People love KDE for it and now KDE seems to loose its identity. I'm sad because of that.

I still hope that once devs figure out how to make this mixing theme feature work, it will come back. Maybe not it the same version but still. Customizing desktop look to such a degree EASILY that no other DE was able to, made KDE to stand out, but now it became just average. A huge loos :(.

> Why not just give a little love to that feature rather then removing it? It
> was very useful! This was one of the biggest features I loved about kde, I
> could customize it in the inside (how it works) and outside (how it looks).
> Now it's like the half of it was gone. My feeling is, we're going in the
> direction of gnome. What is the point of KDE existing if not being extremely
> customable and a complete opposite to gnome philosophy? People love KDE for
> it and now KDE seems to loose its identity. I'm sad because of that.

It simply is one of math - we have a very very limited amount of devs, very few people from the community helping out meaning that even smaller issues becomes things that soak up time for everyone.

The theme editor didn't work well enough to be included with a good conscience and currently the best method is one where you use the Plasma-SDK package to check, blend and test themes (the Theme Explorer specifically) - granted I too want a better situation where perhaps we could have a "theme creator" as an application or something. But that has to be a future choice and one based on whether there are people enough to do it. Having a Plasma desktop starting, working as expected, systemtray etc is more relevant than the theme editor which is harsh but the truth. 

Love sadly is no match against "manpower", "time" and "developer fatigue"

I'm not happy with the result but I understand the problem. I would help out if I had the skills and... time. Also struggle with the latter so I can empathize. It's sad thou that customizability - a core of kde identity is a victim here.

At the moment we are leaning towards the situation where some other DEs have features that KDE doesn't have, like changing kickstarter icon (you can do it in Cinnamon and some other DEs). Sure, we can always edit things manually, but KDE is complicated enough and to find the proper location, file and what to edit is pain in the ass. Also the huge changes that KDE went through caused that searching in google returns mainly obsolete results, what makes finding an info about current KDE version and solutions is even harder.

What is this theme explorer you are talking about? I run it through google but came with obsolete and mixed results.

It would be awesome if a theme creator/editor app would came to life or maybe someday this theme editing feature will show up in some other form?
Or maybe some well written guide for editing KDE themes? Tried to find something like that for gnome 3.18 but it was crazy - tons of information but everything that I didn't want, none of what I searched - and all I wanted was only to find BASIC info about structure of files and directory for theming in certain gnome version so I could find the part I want to edit. Frankly, the lack of appearance flexibility in gnome is the result I always return to kde (and some cool other stuff that other DEs lack). So for me the latest change is a massive blow, despite of the reasons.

just for the record:
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #13)
> Panel Background - doesn't work
worked for me in Plasma 5.5 and works in Plasma 5.6 with theme air

> Translucent background - didn't have an applet that uses that
worked for me for me for a simple symbol in Plasma 5.5 with theme air, unfortunately is does not work anymore in Plasma 5.6

these were the only things I changed from default theme breeze, thankfully I saved my changed theme before installing Plasma 5.6 and I'm not lucky, that this feature has gone.

And the themes from kde-look.org .. I don't like them; and it's really annoying, that Plasma 5.6 offers themes for KDE4

The "

I'm going to miss the ability to set the systray icons TBH. This is the other setting that seems to work mostly.
I have oxylighter5 icons for my systray, air for everything else. Could that setting be moved to the systray settings?

At the moment if I want to change or create a theme, I open iso with older plasma version on Virtual Box and after file is done, send it to Dropbox. Luckily I need just occasionally so I can live with this workaround but it's far from perfect.
I hope that in feature this ability will show up again, although in another form.
At the moment plasma 5 has lot of theme lacks comparing to kde4 so we need to create new themes but now the process became cumbersome :(.

So now that you have taken the possibility to edit themes from the GUI, how can I export my current theme to protect it against accidental, irreversible destruction? I tried looking into ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme, but it only contains the themes I downloaded via the "install more themes" button. My current theme is listed as "(customized)" in System Settings->Desktop theme, so it should be present somewhere.

Oh. there was a .customized folder in that directory - that's where the theme is.