Hi,

I have heard complaints (which I agree with) that there is a lot of space wasting in the default KDE theme. In particular, you can see the margins are sometimes unneccessarily large, and many dialogs are sparse and big relative to the amount of information they contain.

I'd love to help improving the KDE theme in this respect, but don't know where to start. Are there markup files or C++ files I can edit? And is the process similar to making pull requests on Github?

Thank you very much.

pcn wrote:Hi,

I have heard complaints (which I agree with) that there is a lot of space wasting in the default KDE theme. In particular, you can see the margins are sometimes unneccessarily large, and many dialogs are sparse and big relative to the amount of information they contain.

I'd love to help improving the KDE theme in this respect, but don't know where to start. Are there markup files or C++ files I can edit? And is the process similar to making pull requests on Github?

Thank you very much.

Hi,
that "sparseness" is an integral part of the Breeze design (which is also reflected in its name, btw.), in order to give things more breathing room. Therefore it is not the intention to make the Breeze theme more tight.
What I think would be possible is to create an optional more "tight" variant for users to choose. As for which repository the files are located in, we'd have to ask the developers that.

colomar wrote:

pcn wrote:that "sparseness" is an integral part of the Breeze design (which is also reflected in its name, btw.), in order to give things more breathing room.

A more compact theme with less room to breathe could be called 'Wheeze'

ken300 wrote:A more compact theme with less room to breathe could be called 'Wheeze'

*LOL* Brilliant! Don't know if this might have a too negative connotation, but I love it!

pcn wrote:Hi,

I have heard complaints (which I agree with) that there is a lot of space wasting in the default KDE theme. In particular, you can see the margins are sometimes unneccessarily large, and many dialogs are sparse and big relative to the amount of information they contain.

I'd love to help improving the KDE theme in this respect, but don't know where to start. Are there markup files or C++ files I can edit? And is the process similar to making pull requests on Github?

Thank you very much.

Could you share some visual examples of this?

anditosan wrote:

pcn wrote:Hi,

I have heard complaints (which I agree with) that there is a lot of space wasting in the default KDE theme. In particular, you can see the margins are sometimes unneccessarily large, and many dialogs are sparse and big relative to the amount of information they contain.

I'd love to help improving the KDE theme in this respect, but don't know where to start. Are there markup files or C++ files I can edit? And is the process similar to making pull requests on Github?

Thank you very much.

Could you share some visual examples of this?

I'm not the OP, but I believe that I sometimes face this problem as well. I don't have the feeling that the theme is overall "wasting space", but there are a few examples where... well.

See for example
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png

These are fullscreen snapshots taken on a netbook (1024x600). As you can see, the "start menu" ( ) takes up most of the available vertical space on screen. And at the same time, it looks like the height is an arbitrary value (the favorites pane doesn't need that much space, while the applications pane would need more).

The overall feeling on a small screen is that the theme is beautiful, but definitely not meant to be used on the current device. And I definitely don't feel that this theme is giving my desktop more breathing room !

tverron wrote:I'm not the OP, but I believe that I sometimes face this problem as well. I don't have the feeling that the theme is overall "wasting space", but there are a few examples where... well.

See for example
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png

These are fullscreen snapshots taken on a netbook (1024x600). As you can see, the "start menu" ( ) takes up most of the available vertical space on screen. And at the same time, it looks like the height is an arbitrary value (the favorites pane doesn't need that much space, while the applications pane would need more).

The overall feeling on a small screen is that the theme is beautiful, but definitely not meant to be used on the current device. And I definitely don't feel that this theme is giving my desktop more breathing room !

Oh, it seems like the two of you are talking about different things: pcn seems to be talking about the widget theme (for applications), whereas you are talking about the desktop theme. It's not like this invalidates your poibnt or anything, but maybe the discussion should be split between the two.

colomar wrote:

tverron wrote:I'm not the OP, but I believe that I sometimes face this problem as well. I don't have the feeling that the theme is overall "wasting space", but there are a few examples where... well.

See for example
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... dacted.png

These are fullscreen snapshots taken on a netbook (1024x600). As you can see, the "start menu" ( ) takes up most of the available vertical space on screen. And at the same time, it looks like the height is an arbitrary value (the favorites pane doesn't need that much space, while the applications pane would need more).

The overall feeling on a small screen is that the theme is beautiful, but definitely not meant to be used on the current device. And I definitely don't feel that this theme is giving my desktop more breathing room !

Oh, it seems like the two of you are talking about different things: pcn seems to be talking about the widget theme (for applications), whereas you are talking about the desktop theme. It's not like this invalidates your poibnt or anything, but maybe the discussion should be split between the two.

Oh, my bad then. I can't always tell the two apart... ^^
(But anyway, would you really change one without the other?)

Are these images more appropriate then?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... s-kde8.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... s-kde9.png

You can see the large margins around the "cursor bar" (1cm left, 2cm right). The empty space below the text is just a placeholder, it looks weird but I have nothing better to suggest.

In fullscreen (1st screenshot) it's not that much of a problem, but in windowed mode, it needs an horizontal scroll bar (even with full width!).

Or, in another tab:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/275 ... -kde10.png

As you can see, the dropdown menus do not need to be so wide, and again the margins look quite large (and yes, below that, the window adds a scrollbar which only allows to see the end of the margin )

Also note the 2mm margin to the right of the vertical scroll bar (but here I'm not sure who's responsible, the widget toolkit or the window decorator)

The OP may also be referring to the whitespace in the title "Window actions and behaviors", and in the tabs, but it is mostly vertical space, so it doesn't bother me.

tverron wrote:Oh, my bad then. I can't always tell the two apart... ^^
(But anyway, would you really change one without the other?)

No, one probably wouldn't, and that's why it would make sense to offer a complete Look &Feel set optimized for smaller screens, which would contain a Plasma theme, a Widget theme and a Window Decoration theme.

> The empty space below the text is just a placeholder
Not if you talk about what i think you talk about.
The reason is that the descriptions are stashed in a QStackLayout - and the longest description simply determines the required size.
Otherwise the layout would btw. jump-react on dragging the slider.

luebking wrote:> The empty space below the text is just a placeholder
Not if you talk about what i think you talk about.
The reason is that the descriptions are stashed in a QStackLayout - and the longest description simply determines the required size.
Otherwise the layout would btw. jump-react on dragging the slider.

Yes, that's what I meant (sorry, "placeholder" was definitely not the correct word): this space is meant to be filled if the slider is moved.

ken300 wrote:

colomar wrote:

pcn wrote:that "sparseness" is an integral part of the Breeze design (which is also reflected in its name, btw.), in order to give things more breathing room.

A more compact theme with less room to breathe could be called 'Wheeze'

A more compact theme with less room to breathe could be called 'Wheeze' Squeeze .