Hello everyone,

I maintain Yakuake, a popular little drop-down terminal emulator for Plasma and other workspaces. Its default theme is getting a bit long in the tooth now, having been unchanged since the KDE 3 times. I think it's time to give it a facelift and bring it in line with the new Breeze look and feel. I'd love to get your help with this .

This is the current default theme: http://kde-apps.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/29153-1.png

This is a second theme bundled by default: http://kde-apps.org/CONTENT/content-pre2/29153-2.png

You can take a look at the theme data here: http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=yakuake.git& ... ta%2Fskins

As you can see, it's basically a set of PNG files and a text file naming them along with setting a few properties like image positions and colors. It's a quite restrictive format, there is no support for vector data or scaling. However, I suggest you maybe don't constrain yourself by that - I have plans to revamp the theming system and make it more flexible, and a new design might in fact help with figuring out what the requirements are and give me something to aim for. OTOH, if you'd prefer to work within the constraints of the current theming system, that's perfectly fine too.

Thoughts?

My thought is: Yes! Yes to this! If anyone have any cool ideas please post them.

Hein: will doodle some ideas down.

On another note (which perhaps demands its own thread) it would be cool if we looked at good Chromium and VLC themes to push into the preinstalled apps or give as alternatives. Mostly because we can't exactly force them to change their layouts but we can make the layouts look pretty in Breeze by handing out free themes.

Just a thought: Using the breeze window decoration for the bar at the bottom would maybe be an option, but I am not sure about the concept as a whole (it would easily be confused with a window decoration, but it really isn't quite).
Please do not get me wrong, Yakuake is great, but it might be great if it would better integrate in plasma. After all its not a classical application window, so imho it would fit in a category like krunner. How much work would it be to make this a popup like krunner, making use of plasma elements?
Just a thought though, since I do not know the code I can't really say much.

EDIT: To make the question clearer: I am not sure about if it should be integrated with applications or with plasma, but I would be in favor of the latter.

kdeuserk wrote:Please do not get me wrong, Yakuake is great, but it might be great if it would better integrate in plasma.

FWIW: No worries about causing offense, I'm totally open to brainstorming here.

kdeuserk wrote:How much work would it be to make this a popup like krunner, making use of plasma elements?

A lot . BUT: It's in some sense work I have been planning to do.

Got to get a tiny bit technical: Currently, the theming system uses PNG image files, which are used by a combination of custom QWidgets with custom painting code, and regular QWidgets that have stylesheets applied setting the PNGs as backgrounds.

In the new theming system, I want to use a Qt Quick view instead and the Plasma package format for theme archives. This will enable a few things:

* Themes in pure QML that are more flexible to arrange the UI elements, quite similar to how Aurorae works in KWin. For example, in the current system the title bar and tab bar are their own boxes with their own set of possible children, and you can't e.g. merge them or put elements from one into the other. The three buttons at the bottom-right will never be on the same bar as the tabs in the current theming system, for example.

* A QML-based theme that uses Qt Quick Controls components and so can use the standard application theme.

* A QML-based theme that uses Plasma components and thus the Plasma theme.

* A theme that uses a set of custom QQuickItem components that can load+apply the legacy theme files, to retain compatibility with all the existing themes users have made.

In my mind the technical complexity of this will be hidden from the user, though. The theme list in the config dialog will just stay the same - both new themes and old themes will show up in the list. And the number of bundled default themes that can't be removed will just grow by two, called "Use application theme" and "Use Plasma theme" or so. Theme authors will be able to combine all these techniques to their heart's content in custom themes.

Second BUT: I work on Yakuake on my spare time, the above is a lot of work, and while I have A Plan it still leaves a loooot of details to work out in the creation of all of these bits and pieces. However, the Yakuake KF5 port is almost ready for release. So I think there would actually be some utility in someone creating a new theme within the constraints of the current theming system that could be bundled with a release soon, before we aim for the sky -- waiting with the Yakuake release until the above is implemented would not be reasonable, and releasing Yakuake with the old theme would be a bummer. So we might have to think two-stage, long-term here!

Hi hein,

thanks for calling for a new theme. I made a breeze preview. feel free to commit.



It is nice to read that you plan future development in yakuake. I use it since I found the programm.

From the theme part I have two wishes.
1. Could you support unselected_left_corner and unselected_right_corner as you can see in the screen shot at the selected tab I use rounded edges but for the unselected I can only use unselected_background.
2. Would it be possible (easy to implement) to support svg files? because the breeze theme use svg files and when you support svg I think it was possible to make a theme from the selected icon theme (breeze, oxygen, ...).

Please give me feedback. I'l prepare the theme file on the weekend. I'd like to make also a tutorial for design new themes. you support a lot of nice things, so the designer (or me) need a lot of time to understand how the theme will work.

Hi Andreas,

that looks quite nice! Yes, I think I can add support for those two fairly easily .

thanks.

Ok now my next design preview.



what do you think when you know how the theme engine work, it is easy to realize your mockup, so you are very welcome.

I hope to get around to implementing unselected_left_corner and unselected_right_corner tomorrow! Not entirely sure yet, the weekend is quite full .

jensreuterberg wrote:On another note (which perhaps demands its own thread) it would be cool if we looked at good Chromium and VLC themes to push into the preinstalled apps or give as alternatives. Mostly because we can't exactly force them to change their layouts but we can make the layouts look pretty in Breeze by handing out free themes.

Well, for VLC at least, we are on pretty good footing with the developers (they've attended Akademy, invited us to hacking sprints, etc.), and I know that they would love a better look and feel. So if we come up with a good design and get it implemented I'm fairly sure we can get it into VLC, and maybe made default as well.

sandsmark wrote:

jensreuterberg wrote:On another note (which perhaps demands its own thread) it would be cool if we looked at good Chromium and VLC themes to push into the preinstalled apps or give as alternatives. Mostly because we can't exactly force them to change their layouts but we can make the layouts look pretty in Breeze by handing out free themes.

Well, for VLC at least, we are on pretty good footing with the developers (they've attended Akademy, invited us to hacking sprints, etc.), and I know that they would love a better look and feel. So if we come up with a good design and get it implemented I'm fairly sure we can get it into VLC, and maybe made default as well.

that would be really great. And of course they have a nice style method.

you can found some nice themes which look similar to viewtopic.php?f=285&t=123213
http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/V ... -345256054
http://rasvob.deviantart.com/art/Skyfir ... -457179002
http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/V ... -385698882
http://kryptonsyt.deviantart.com/art/VL ... -437200484

as you can see you can make individual design. maybe someone can start a thread with mockup discussion. the realization isn't that much complicated. AND of course you can use the vlc engine.

OK, the frameworks branch of Yakuake now supports unselected_left_corner and unselected_right_corner! It's drawn instead of separator_image if the theme provides them.

I should add: The skin configuration UI is not fully ported yet, so you can't install and switch skins there at the moment. If you want to test your new theme, the easiest way would be to replace the default theme's files, or make a new theme folder and put something like this into ~/.config/yakuakerc:

Code: Select all

[Appearance]
Skin=<themename>


Or of course I can also happily test things for you.

Thanks for the implementation.

My current style looks like this and don't need the new implementation, but I'll will go further.



As you can see the theme looks ok, but I think someone can make a better one, so I will upload a manual to design your own style. The style file including the svg files can be download here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/164 ... 1.0.tar.gz I'll upload it also to opendesktop.org

andreas_k wrote:Thanks for the implementation.

My current style looks like this and don't need the new implementation, but I'll will go further.



As you can see the theme looks ok, but I think someone can make a better one, so I will upload a manual to design your own style. The style file including the svg files can be download here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/164 ... 1.0.tar.gz I'll upload it also to opendesktop.org

I think the design is fitting for Breeze.