https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106756
Bug ID: 106756
Summary: Default Theme and Icon Set
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 3.3.0 release
Hardware: Other
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: enhancement
Priority: medium
Component: LibreOffice
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
Description:
This bug report aims at reaching an agreement on the fact that having a default
theme and icon set is a good thing.
The issue
=========
Currently, the appearance of LibreOffice varies, depending on the operating
system, the desktop shell, the used custom theme. In some cases the
functionality is narrowed because graphical elements are difficult to see or
almost completely hidden. Sometimes the colors of the theme and icon set don’t
match well, resulting in an unaesthetic appearance. Also the size of visual
items differ. The described issue existed already in OpenOffice and was never
fixed.
Major problem
-------------
By changing the operating system theme – an action not in control of
LibreOffice – the functionality can be reduced up to the point where certain
actions are not possible, because widgets blend with the background.
Sub-problems
------------
* Current appearance is inconsistent across installations.
* Current appearance is neither beautiful nor aesthetic (debatable, I know).
To highlight some problems, I appended screenshots showing:
Pic 1 - LibreOffice on FreeBSD, using the i3 desktop shell with a dark theme
Image shows that the theme and icons set have a very bad contrast. The
functionality is reduced, some features are not usable at all, because UI
elements can not be differentiated from the background. The overall appearance
is unaesthetic, almost unpleasant.
Pic 2 - LibreOffice on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
The UI is not fully functional, because the blue – coming from the a custom
system theme – is too light and makes therefore the paragraph-highlighting
almost unusable. The blue dots from the paragraph-highlighting are hard to
identify between the words and the small light-gray background dots (a.k.a. the
visual-grid).
Pic 3 - The fallback theme (SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen ./soffice)
Icons are too small, therefore hard to identify. The toolbars have a curved
background-style, not used in any other of my LibreOffice installations. The UI
elements feel out-of-place, the overall appearance is unpleasant, might remind
users of UI’s created in the nineties.
Suggested Solution
==================
By using a single theme and icon set we could not only solve the above
described major problem – changes outside of LibreOffice would not affect its
appearance nor have possible usability impacts – it would also allow us to
improve the UI and make it beautiful and aesthetic by carefully arranging used
colors and shapes.
By controlling the theme and icon set we could also make sure the UI works for
color blind (approximately 4.5 % of the population) or slightly visually
impaired people.
Having a single theme and icon set means:
More control
------------
* Would allow us to define color palettes and use them everywhere.
* Would allow us to make sure that icons have a nice contrast relative to their
surroundings.
* That the used visual style and the >>iconography<< are consistent.
* Would allow us to make the UI pixel-perfect, by defining precisely the size
and form of every visible item.
Branding
--------
A consistent single UI is easily recognizable, people get used to it, it is
what people love about a product beside the functionality. Therefore a stronger
branding by having a default UI – which uses the same colors… – would be an
improvement.
Almost granted, but in this context should maybe be said, almost every
well-known application ships with a single default UI (some allow to switch to
a dark theme, but lets ignore that topic for now).
Have a preference setting to allow current behavior
---------------------------------------------------
To please power-users and preserve the current theming capabilities there
should be a check-box in the preferences to use the theme and icons from the
operating system.
Conclusion
==========
I’m aware that this issue report might touch on a highly controversial topic. I
would love to hear your opinions/thoughts about why things are the way they
are, and how the situation could be improved.
Steps to Reproduce:
see description
Actual Results:
see description
Expected Results:
see description
Reproducible: Always
User Profile Reset: No
Additional Info:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/52.0
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