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This idea is based on simplifying the nearly unusable custom theme interface for plasma, and making it more powerful in one swoop.

Instead of having a single, massive theme selection dialog, this calls for it to be abstracted by having smaller theme selection dialogs on a per-widget basis; Similar to how each plasmoid has a share option, they would all also receive their own individual theme/style options.

Plasmoids would always begin with the "default theme" selected. Changing the theme would affect just that widget alone. There may be a check-box to apply that theme to all widgets of the same class (E.g. "Apply to all other clock plasmoids").

The control panel would then remove the custom dialog, or re-label it as an "advanced" dialog, and the workspace option would only affect the defaults. There would be a checkbox labeled "apply to all plasmoids", which would revert all plasmoids to the default theme.

If a widget has multiple styles it can choose from (E.g. how docks can have unique styles for background, buttons, etc) it may show up as tabs in the universal per-widget menu. The primary style of the widget might have a check-box to keep the style uniform, which would grey-out the other tabs.



As a practical example; Say I like the mac-style dock from the mac-style plasma theme, but I want -just- the bottom panel to have this style, otherwise keeping a top-panel and desktop widgets as air. I right-click the bottom panel, select preferences, and in that menu I select themes. Out of the theme list I pick the mac-style theme and save. It refreshes the panel, which now looks like the mac dock. However, my top panel is unchanged with the air theme.

Otherwise, I would be going into the control panel, desktop theme details, picking a theme to edit, and going through the list picking (blind) from a dropdown for each element with no previews in the dropdowns. Then to apply it I would need to set the theme to the custom as well. It's also hard to tell in this method to know that the panel background, pager, and task items are part of the dock. By having them as all part of the plasmoids own dialog, you know by association any tabs listed in the theme section are all parts of the plasmoid.