Bug 371489 - Breeze style elements are looking too big
Summary: Breeze style elements are looking too big
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 418904
Alias: None
Product: Breeze
Classification: Plasma
Component: QStyle (show other bugs)
Version: 5.8.2
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Hugo Pereira Da Costa
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2016-10-22 17:50 UTC by hotmusicfan
Modified: 2021-02-17 21:14 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Dolphin menu in KDE4 and Plasma 5.20 side by side (128.44 KB, image/png)
2021-02-17 21:01 UTC, dev.dliw
Details

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Description hotmusicfan 2016-10-22 17:50:48 UTC
Hello!

Recently I have tried openSUSE Tumbleweed and KDE Neon and I saw something very unpleasant - the menus, the buttons and other elements are looking too big. This is not issue related to font size because I narrowed down the fonts to 7 and 8px and the affected elements continued to be elephant sized. My display is set to the maximum resolution. I found that with other styles (Fusion for example) the problem does not exist or is not so bad. This problem leads to exhausting of the workspace.

Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 hotmusicfan 2016-10-22 17:54:28 UTC
Screenshot:
https://s16.postimg.org/553mzlhw5/IMG_5995.jpg
Comment 2 Hugo Pereira Da Costa 2016-11-03 09:21:39 UTC
Hi,
Thanks for reporting and sorry for the delay for answering.
We are aware of the complain about breeze being too space consuming (although in general one does get use to it). There are plans to have a "compact" breeze mode. It just needs some time to implement.
Comment 3 hotmusicfan 2016-11-03 20:04:16 UTC
(In reply to Hugo Pereira Da Costa from comment #2)
> Hi,
> Thanks for reporting and sorry for the delay for answering.
> We are aware of the complain about breeze being too space consuming
> (although in general one does get use to it). There are plans to have a
> "compact" breeze mode. It just needs some time to implement.

Thank you! :) It will be very useful, especially on 10 to 14" displays in netbooks. Wish you success to the work! :)
Comment 4 dev.dliw 2017-04-27 10:41:00 UTC
Compact mode for Breeze and Oxygen5 is very much needed. It is critical for low resolution screens, but also can be helpful on higher resolution screens.
Comment 5 RJVB 2017-07-05 08:46:30 UTC
+++

The elements are not just looking too big, they are.

I've been mentioning this since the first time I tried the new Oxygen theme for KDE4.

I've never worked on a very high res screen (1080p is more than enough for me) but I kind of expect that the size of the style elements will be proportional to the font size you're using. IOW, the screen estate waste will be comparable on a 4k screen when fonts are configured to have a comparable apparent size as on a normal resolution screen.

Remember you can buy a new hires screen which a certain company calls a Retina screen, but you cannot replace those 2 actual screens we biologists call retinas. And their effective resolving power doesn't increase over time...
Comment 6 Christoph Feck 2017-07-26 09:38:51 UTC
*** Bug 382740 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Aleksey Kontsevich 2017-07-26 11:59:18 UTC
When it will be fixed? Need to switch to other style for now?
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2020-03-09 02:53:27 UTC
No longer an issue today.
Comment 9 Aleksey Kontsevich 2020-03-09 11:58:33 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #8)
> No longer an issue today.

Why? When and how it was fixed? Still using QtCurve instead.
Comment 10 dev.dliw 2020-03-09 18:12:41 UTC
Better than Oxygen style and may have improved a bit, but definitely still a problem. Try to use Plasma 5 on a notebook with a small low-resolution display. Still using KDE4.
Comment 11 RJVB 2020-03-09 18:17:39 UTC
(In reply to dev.dliw from comment #10)
> Still using KDE4.

Here idem, for the DE at least.

Are there any modern distros that still get updates (= newer than Ubuntu 14.04) that still have packages for the Plasma4 desktop?
Comment 12 Nate Graham 2021-02-16 20:37:32 UTC
I don't think this is an actionable issue, sorry. :( There is a vocal contingent of users on both sides of this issue: right now, we get bug reports and complaints from people who think everything is too big, as well as from people who think everything is too small! So we don't really have any freedom of movement here without annoying one group even more. Accordingly, I think we have to stay with how things are right now, and be content with small tweaks on a case-by-case basis, as needed.
Comment 13 Aleksey Kontsevich 2021-02-16 21:21:53 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #12)
> I don't think this is an actionable issue, sorry. :( 

It is!

> contingent of users on both sides of this issue: right now, we get bug
> reports and complaints from people who think everything is too big, as well
> as from people who think everything is too small! 

First, the ticket created by people who remember how it was and has applications to compare.

Second, who do no rely on KDE team to fix this can use Qt Curve which has tons of options and similar or same controls styles, but elements and spaces between lines are good.
Comment 14 RJVB 2021-02-16 21:48:16 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #12)
> I don't think this is an actionable issue, sorry. :( There is a vocal
> contingent of users on both sides of this issue: right now, we get bug
> reports and complaints from people who think everything is too big, as well
> as from people who think everything is too small! So we don't really have
> any freedom of movement here without annoying one group even more.

Oh yes you have. I'd say there are at least 2 possibilities:
- create additional breeze-xs (lull?) and breeze-xl (gale?) styles. My guess is that you can generate them from the same code with appropriately chosen constant scale factors that are applied at compile time.
- make the airyness a user-controllable parameter so that users can fine-tune this aspect themselves.

It stands to reason that monitor size, resolution, visual acuity and last but not least personal taste are all at play here, meaning that the members of both the "too large" and the "too small" contingents probably disagree over just how much things are too large or small. The latter solution would thus be the preferable one - and undoutedly also the most interesting (challenging) to get right.

> Accordingly, I think we have to stay with how things are right now, and be
> content with small tweaks on a case-by-case basis, as needed.
Comment 15 Nate Graham 2021-02-16 21:52:17 UTC
Like I said, making things smaller would upset the people who say that things are already too small. So that's not an option

However we could conceivably make the internal padding configurable to allow people to self-satisfy, like in QtCurve and Fusion. So I can mark this as a duplicate of the bug report that requests that.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 418904 ***
Comment 16 RJVB 2021-02-16 22:24:19 UTC
And I said create two ADDITIONAL styles, one smaller, one larger, so that all 3 camps (assuming there are indeed 3) have a choice.

But it should be possible to make the padding (as well as the size of elements) scalable with a single slider, even if inside there are multiple mappings being made from that single scale value. Or maybe it'd be better to have 2 sliders, one for the padding, one for element size.
Comment 17 dev.dliw 2021-02-17 21:01:59 UTC
Created attachment 135793 [details]
Dolphin menu in KDE4 and Plasma 5.20 side by side
Comment 18 dev.dliw 2021-02-17 21:10:30 UTC
Just for illustration: the Dolphin menu has only 4 entries more in Plasma 5.20, but it needs significantly more space. Identical settings: DPI, font and font size. On this particular device, this is almost the entire screen height.

I guess that those who complain about sizes being too small have a high density device and are not aware of the scaling option.

Leider ist dies eine von vielen "Design-Innovationen" von Plasma 5, die sich wie "mobile first" anfühlen und das Benutzererlebnis für Desktop-Benutzer zunehmend verschlechtern. Und das sage ich als jemand, der seit fast 20 Jahren ausschließlich KDE verwendet (derzeit noch KDE4).
Comment 19 dev.dliw 2021-02-17 21:14:33 UTC
Sorry, I accidentally activated my translator. The last part means:

Unfortunately, this is one of many "design innovations" of Plasma 5 that feel like "mobile first" and increasingly degrade the user experience for desktop users. And I say that as someone who has used KDE exclusively for almost 20 years (currently still KDE4).