Plasma 5.22 Kickoff Notes

[Marco Martin]

I knew from a long time it was to be the default style on plamo.. I
never really agreed to default to it on plasma mobile but since looked
like it was the majority decision i didn't oppose it too much (even
qqc2-desktop-style would be fine on plamo for now, there may have been
issues with using the plasma style )
A QQC2 style is not a plasma style, it's something that is very
difficult to maintain .. *almost as much as a qstyle*, really.

Now having this style in workspace puts all of us quite in a big
maintenance burden, throws away all the fixes done through the years
in qqc2-desktop-style, makes more difficult to identify where a bug
actually is and makes qml apps more inconsistent with qwidget ones.
Using it as default on the desktop would be a huge mistake as well,
would make hunting any bug much more difficult, putting a maintenance
burden and time sync that should be used instead to solve the issue of
how we *really* want to do themes, as this approach is really not
sustainable.

The real core issue is:
qqc2-desktop-styles are *not* suitable for generic 3rd party theming.
The name suggests otherwise, but that's simply not true.
they can control too much of the behavior of controls, to the point of
even adding new api if they desire so., and making applications to not
start at all if they contain any error (or even if the style uses a
qqc2 import version older than what the app uses)
so, every platform should really maintain one, as the effort to have a
correct one is huge already. (oh, and they can't be switched a runtime
without restarting the app)

For a 3rd party theming, is needed really something else way more
limited (and the fact that's more limited it's a feature)
something based upon some combination of css and images is really the
only proper way forward i can see.
And working towards a style that gives that, to me is a way better way
to spend hundreds of hours of development into.

The fact that things like that are needed to keep the VDG kids
excited, is *not* an argument,  we really cannot compromise the
quality for the sake of that.

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 10:21 AM David Redondo <kde at david-redondo.de> wrote:
>
> Thank you for your opinion Marco.
>
> Am Mittwoch, 10. März 2021, 09:30:35 CET schrieb Marco Martin:
> > wasn't present at the kickoff meeting so commenting just here, just now.
> > I'm quite against qqc2-breeze-style and i think it was a mistake.
> > It was that the style used in plasma-mobile had bugs, so let's just
> > write a whole new style from scratch putting more maintainance burden
> > on the time being.
>
> I also was worried about the maintenance burden in the meeting being double
> and having to keep everything in sync.
> Furthermore a controls style does not only change the visuals but can also
> influence the behavior of the controls. I feel that the goal of qqc2-breeze-
> style to be as similar as possible in that regard to the styles shipped with
> Qt is not one we should aim for. It means that it will lead to a (more) split
> desktop experience, missing fixes in qqc2-desktop-style where the default
> behavior is different to widgets or just bad.
>
> As written in the notes many of were suprised of the inclusion, including me.
> I thought it would maybe go to extragear, but the issue I think was that the
> review mail never specified the intended place for the project.
>
> Regards,
> David
>
>
>


-- 
Marco Martin