Thanks for volunteering! We’ll do regular call for testing on the community hub once we get advanced enough 
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Will there be a Qt version of this new Ubuntu theme? I know there is Adwaita-Qt for Qt apps like VLC and Virtualbox.
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Under a GNOME environment, there is an adaptor to use GTK look, so it should be ok, but we’ll check 
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Does this adapter in 17.10? The reason I ask is VLC and Virtualbox look out of place but in 16.04 they did not.
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Qt uses theme engines (written in C++) to change the appearance of widgets. It also has platform plugins which are used to set the theme to match the current desktop (Gnome, KDE, windows, mac, etc), and also to provide access to the platform’s file dialogs, colour picker, etc.
Previous Ubuntu releases used QGtkStyle for the theme. This used Gtk2 to paint into pixmaps, which were then drawn where the Qt widgets would be. This was never that good - arrows in scrollbars were sometimes missing, or not drawn correctly. For the platform plugin, there was a dbus menu plugin to export a Qt app’s menubar to the global menu bar, etc. Again, this had issues where it always drew menu icons for Qt apps.
Fedora currently use the Adwaita-Qt theme engine - which is a C++ engine specifically mean to mimic Adwaita. They also use the QGnomePlatform platform plugin - which tries to locate a Qt theme that matches the current Gtk theme (it can use Adwaita-Qt for Adwaita, and Kvantum for others). This platform plugin also provides access to the Gtk3 file dialogs.
As I’ve stated before, the Kvantum theme engine can be used to provide a much better Gtk-like theme for Qt apps. This is a C++ engine, which loads SVG files to draw the widgets. It also provides Qt apps with real overlay scrollbars (the only Qt engine that currently does this). For an example of a Qt app using Kvantum’s Ambiance-like theme, see Cantata This is not 100% perfect, but is much better than the experience provided by QtkStyle
To provide a Qt equivalent for whatever Gtk3 theme is chosen, should be a matter of providing a Kantum config and SVG file for this theme. (I’m 99.99% sure Kvantum’s author would be more than willing to help). The QGnomePlatform should also be used so that Qt apps automatically pick up a matching theme for the user’s Gtk theme.
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Hi, I offer myself to help, I like these kinds of initiatives to include the community: -)
Although I’m not a designer I’ve collected some experience creating both the (Plane icon theme) set and the theme (Plane GTK3), both of which are still in development.
With the icons in “SVG” I have had better results, besides anyone in the community could adapt them to their needs, it is good to have different shapes and contrasts because it helps to identify them easily, so I am not a fan of Flat-design. It is very important to have a version of each icon for each resolution (pixel perfect) even if they are in “SVG”.
ex:
https://github.com/wfpaisa/plane-icon-theme/raw/master/assets/screenshots/screenshot-08.png
In the theme that I’m currently doing, I’m avoiding using images, creating all styles only with CSS, this helps the community a lot when it comes to generating color variations.
ex:
https://github.com/wfpaisa/plane-gtk/blob/master/screenshots.md
Greetings.
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Hi all, thanks to everyone suggesting my Suru “reboot” for the new icon theme, it looks like it’s going to be the new default.
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That would be great if Suru is default, thank you for all your work on it, I loved Suru icons on my Ubuntu phone and seeing it on the desktop would be even better.
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Speaking of the Suru icons, maybe you already inherited this work, but yesterday I managed to include the work that Matthieu James did before leaving in the mailine ubuntu-themes (@rodrigostucker you might give a look to that). At least for the record.
So, please sync with that in case the community choose such icons as a starting point.
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I have actually already used some of the work in that branch as a basis for the rebooted Suru icons. I was always following along with the development of the icons It’s where I got the folder concept.
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On Suru icons. @snwh @didrocks how are you going to deal with the fact that many upstream icons won’t have Suru variants? As @d0od says:
'Another caveat is that the icon set does not include replacement icons for third-party apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, Spotify, Skype, etc (neither does Ubuntu’s current icon theme, Humanity).
This creates a bit jarring visual where the uniform look of Suru icons for first-party apps, but stock icons for third-party apps, is a little…pronounced.’
You can’t make Suru icons for every third-party app, so how can this be made less jarring aside from making icons for as many third-party apps as possible (maybe this is the only possibility)?
Also, do the custom icons apply to snaps as well? Maybe worth checking and communicating on the snapcraft forum if necessary about that issue?
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The best option would likely be to make Suru icons for popular third party applications like Dropbox, Viber, Skype, Telegram and some others. I dont know if that infringes any copyrights, but I know that Numix icon theme for example includes Numix icons for many third party applications though Numix is not usually present on iso disc images of Linux distributions. If having third party applications icons on the iso infringes any copyrights perhaps there should be an Suru icon pack extension the users install with ubuntu-restricted-extras or a separate package? Maybe include it in installation meta-package under “Download Third Party etc” so that users download it from the Internet during installation as opposed to including them on the iso. Or if that cant be done then I guess the easiest way is to include suru-icons-extra package or something we can install to get those Suru icons for Viber etc. It is probably impossible to cover all third party applications, but most popular ones like Dropbox, Viber, Skype, Telegram, Chrome, Opera etc should be included, there arent too many of those compared to basic icons for applications from Ubuntu repositories which are far more numerous.
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Well @ads20000, Joey is entitled to his opinion.
But the fact of the matter is that third-party application icons are brands and, like it or not, it’s not a software vendor’s place to override branded icons. Logos like that of Firefox, etc. are copyrighted images and to modify and ship altered versions of logos would be an infringement on their copyright.
One may have the opinion that it’s “jarring” but desktop Suru has been designed with the Tango/FreeDesktop icon spec in mind so that it doesn’t look completely out of place.
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Hey, I did some mockups inspired by Sams icons and previous themes. If you need some help I might be able to lend a hand.
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Great to hear, I was guessing that, but just to make sure
Thanks!
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Forgive me, I find the folder icons in Suru a bit " crude " going by the latest standards. I tried to pack a couple of suggestions which looks more simple and go with what we have in mind
I tried to put in a simple version, a detailed one and refined it further. Also included a cursor on look for refined variant Kindly give your suggestions
Was working on library folders
added a few plain folders into the screen shot
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It seems you are more familiar with the Qt platform than any of us I suggest we start focusing on the GTK theme, and once we are advanced enough to not have duplicating the work or late changes again, we reach out the Kantum’s author to get some help on configuring a similar look than our current theme advancement. Would you like bridging that gap on the Qt side for us?
@wfpaisa: I’ve added you to the team, great work on those teams! Do not hesitate to help where you can
There is plan for the snap team to reuse the installed system theme, as well as icons and others, so it shouldn’t collide on the long term. At worst, we do include them in the platform snap, as we do nowdays.
I started to create a FAQ btw, seeing some similar questions (and misconceptions from the press in particular) being spreaded: FAQ: Ubuntu new theme - Theme Refresh - Ubuntu Community Hub
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I’ve got to secong @snwh opinion on that…we should respect application’s branding, but I think we can “adjust” it to our mission here. I don’t know if it’s a viable option (I’m pretty much a begginer on Linux theming still) but we could mask the applications icons to fit the system theme, kinda like Samsung does with icon boxes on Touchwiz, or most android custom launchers are doing with adaptive icons. It is ,technologically speaking, viable to do that in Gnome?
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pic from that OMG article
Most icons don’t have a colored square around their icon though?
Is there anyone (other than the Suru icon creator) who supported the switch to Suru who considered this problem?
And how was Canonical going to handle this issue (presumably they thought about this when working on Unity 8 and Suru?)
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Masking is not currently possible under GNOME –the intention of masking was there in Unity8, but that died with that project.
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