It is really great to see the KDE community coming up with Breeze as a grand unified theme (and Oxygen before that²) and also many other such developments like e.g. Tibana, Helium, Caledonia to name just a few of the most popular ones.

But what this shows us that there is not just supply, but also demand for full themes in KDE – such that include a matching Plasma widget theme, icon theme, KWin decoration, colour scheme, style, cursor theme, wallpaper(s) …heck, why not even emoticons, fonts, login screens, system sounds!? Of course all this should be optional and it should be up to the each themer to decide which pieces they want to include in the grand theme and which to ommit.

I would go even further and suggest that this be made into the new theming interface of the System settings.

What in my opinion the Plasma desktop needs (again) is a simple way for themers to create such theme packs – for now let’s call them grand themes – and for users to (browse and) install them even easier. With these we could not just make enable an easer way to have consistent themes, but also make Plasma (and KDE in general) more attractive to (potential) new users and those who are easily intimidated by the many awesome ways how you can tweak Plasma (and KDE in general). Also, I believe that the user should be able to modify that theme and save (and upload) it as a new theme.

Normal users will probably just want to decide between grand themes like „Breeze”, „Oxygen”, „Produkt” and be amazed at how different KDE can look like with a simple click; while power users will want to make use of the advanced options and tweak it to the max, save their favourite combinations and share them with the world.

I’m not (much of) a coder or themer, but the way I imagine it, all that the grand theme would need to do is include paths to where the individual themes (sound, kwin, colours, …) are on the disk and online. As for the interface, I imagine something in the lines of the current “Tweak Plasma theme” interface (only with more useful previews).

Already in the past¹, even before the awesome kde-look.org era, we had theme packs (at least) for KDE 3.x, so what I am proposing is nothing new. The question of how exactly to implement it, is probably better poised to the wonderful and talented people creating the themes – you. So I hope this will turn into a good discussion on how this should be done (and if at all).

Some totally made up, yet plausible, use cases:

• Alice is a teacher at a highschool and also in charge of their IT (budget cuts everywhere), knowing that her school kids like to go wild with their desktops’ settings, she wants to give them a useful default that shows the schools colours (imagine Hogwarts). The same theme they also use (and it cannot be changed) on the public terminals as well as freely offer it to any student or fan to use on their home computer. Some kids use the standard highschool theme in school and at home, some tweak the hell out of it, but mostly the dean and the more conservative teachers feel great that also the computers (by default) use the school’s corporate identity. As an added bonus to the school, some proud parents use the theme on their work computers to show their support.
• Bob is a gamer who likes showing off his laptop’s awesome looks to his mates. From the log-in to the system sounds he wants everything to remind him of this favourite game Ryzom, so he may never need to leave Atys. So he took the official Ryzom theme, and just changed some wallpapers so it to represent his own character better. When the official Ryzom grand theme updates, he updates on his Plasma and just changes the wallpaper again (better yet, the theme asks him whether he wants to keep his current non-standard wallpaper).
• Celine works in public administration and is a huge fan of GNU/Linux and wants to move the whole administration to Free Software, but realises that the higher-ups demand a predictable and unified desktop, so they don’t need to retrain the staff every time a new version comes up (they’ve still got headaches from the mighty Ribbon). What she could use or even create is a grand theme that makes KDE looks familiar to the OS/desktop they already use, including the visuals and the set up of the panels, default widgets, number of desktops (perhaps even some general settings and menu items). Even if there is a new KDE version installed on a new PC, she can just import that theme and the public servants will feel at home. With this predictable desktop, she can convince her boss easier that they migrate to KDE and GNU/Linux.
• Donald is a minimalist, and wants to have everything clean, flat and monochromatic. He wants to create that one theme to rule them all and keep to it (until someone creates an even flatter and cleaner version)!

—
[1] For the nostalgic oldbies, I’m talking about the times of kde.themes.org, fluxbox.themes.org etc., aye.
[2] KDE 3 already came with some great styles (I loved Crystal and Fahrenheit), but it was not a unified look; those came from the community itself.

You're preaching to the choir
This topic has come up countless times now in various threads in this forum and discussions all over the place and yes, we definitely all want it (not only the VDG, but the developers, too)!
Given that it is quite a big undertaking, it will have to be planned carefully and will take some time, but I can promise you that none of us will rest until this is done.

I sure hope so, and this time will (figuratively) hold my breath!

I’ve been waiting for years for this and have even prodded occasionaly in that direction, like asking for the max. file size limit to be enlarged on kde-look.org in order for themes to be uploaded there instead of file lockers.

If there is a better thread for this, I gladly accept that this one is closed (or appended), but I couldn’t find it.

hook wrote:If there is a better thread for this, I gladly accept that this one is closed (or appended), but I couldn’t find it.

This thread is fine! It's been mentioned in lots of threads, but there was no thread specifically for this topic yet, so now it has its own home

colomar wrote:

hook wrote:If there is a better thread for this, I gladly accept that this one is closed (or appended), but I couldn’t find it.

This thread is fine! It's been mentioned in lots of threads, but there was no thread specifically for this topic yet, so now it has its own home

Great! Feel free to rename it, if there’s a better title for it

Yay! It’s becoming a reality in Plasma 5.1!

http://notmart.org/blog/2014/08/choose- ... xperience/

also the new theming interface was already discussed here (incl. mockup):

viewtopic.php?f=285&t=119701

hook wrote:Yay! It’s becoming a reality in Plasma 5.1!

http://notmart.org/blog/2014/08/choose- ... xperience/

also the new theming interface was already discussed here (incl. mockup):

viewtopic.php?f=285&t=119701

Ah, yeah, I should have mentioned it here. Sorry.