HumanQtTheme

Revision 5 as of 2006-06-06 15:01:48

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Summary

This specification defines a visually-equivalent (or as nearly so as possible) Human theme for Qt/KDE apps when running in Ubuntu (i.e. not Kubuntu). It also defines appropriate magic to only affect Qt/KDE apps running in GNOME, so as not to interfere with Kubuntu's theme decisions. The goal being that, out of the box, any Qt/KDE app launched in Edgy (while running GNOME) will look exactly like a GTK/GNOME app. Think Bluecurve for Ubuntu.

What this spec is not:

  • This spec is not GTK/Qt theme integration. Freedesktop.org is working on that, and it's a much more ambitious (but sorely needed) project than this. This is simply a spec to default to a visually equivalent theme for Qt/KDE apps when running them in GNOME (or XFCE, if the Xubuntu folks are interested).
  • This spec is not a proposal to change Kubuntu's default theme or any other aspect of Kubuntu. The only interaction with the Kubuntu folks needed will be in figuring out any necessary packaging / filesystem magic to make sure their theme choices override this when someone logs in to KDE.
  • This spec is not an attempt to make GTK/GNOME apps take on a Kubuntu-like theme by default when running KDE (i.e. the reverse of this spec). That is at least equally complex to this project, and there's probably very little the two projects could share, code-wise. I don't use Kubuntu/KDE, but if someone in the Kubuntu camp wanted to implement such a creature, I'd certainly welcome it and help out wherever I could.

Rationale

  • Emily uses Skype to phone friends over her broadband connection. But when she installs the (closed source, Qt-based) Skype client on her Dapper Drake laptop, it looks very boxy and pixelated (aliased fonts), not curvy and polished like most of the other programs she runs on her Ubuntu system. Then she notices that her friend Bobby is running the same program on his Fedora laptop, and it looks pretty nice. At least it looks like every other app on his system. She wonders why it's broken on her Ubuntu computer.

  • Sarah is a Kubuntu user who writes software in Qt. She would like to encourage Ubuntu and Xubuntu users to try out her programs too, but she first has to direct them to [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=56630&highlight=Qt+theme a lengthy and complicated HOWTO on making their Qt apps look more GNOME-ish] (or at least not butt ugly). She thinks her apps should look like first-class citizens on Ubuntu / Xubuntu out of the box.

Dependencies