Dash to Dock merits and support

Migrating the D2D discussion from http://community.ubuntu.com/t/call-for-participation-an-ubuntu-default-theme-lead-by-the-community/1545/222

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Just for clarification: the Ubuntu dock has all the features of dash-to-dock. The config options are just hidden in the gui. However, they do exist behind the scenes, so the theme can change those (and you can too using dconf).

The Ubuntu desktop team can’t possibly support all the config options of dash-to-dock, that’s why they are hidden. You can change them yourself, but know that it’s a config that is not tested by Ubuntu QA.

It’s definitely possible to change the defaults, if you have any suggestions.

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I dont even know why this is an issue . And the end user should have an easy way to theme their ui to their liking .

Every config option that is exposed to the end user needs to be tested thoroughly in all the possible combinations. This means that every individual config option is a multiplier to the amount of tests required. There are many interesting ways that stuff can break. The location of the apps button seems like a simple innocent change, but it can still cause issues. Look at the pop-os theme bugtracker for all the weird ways a theme can break your system. Look at the dash-to-dock bugtracker for all the weird ways different configurations cause different bugs.

We can change the default for this, because then that configuration will be thoroughly tested, but we should not expose the users to untested configurations. The Ubuntu team and community testers should be the ones finding these bugs, not the end-users because the end-users will most likely not even understand which config option is causing the issues.

Im an end user with higher than average skills and i dont want to have to fire up dconf to change things either.

Yes, that’s exactly the idea, most users just won’t bother. This results in more stability since 90% of users only use features that were thoroughly tested.

Edit: and not to mention the impact on documentation, screenshots, video and tutorials…

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Thanks again for the reply.
That’s a fair explanation . Now the to be the devil’s advocate . Then why ship Ubuntu with an alternative dock at all ?

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@jasonflindt: When you say “alternative”, do you mean why not just use the upstream dock extension? It’s explained here…

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Thanks . No I meant alternative to the gnome dock.
But this thread is meant to be about themes . So i’ll say that we should stop our line of discussion . :zipper_mouth_face:

I lean towards the line of thinking that users will try to change the defaults becouse the options are not there and will end up getting it all wrong .
But since this thread is about themes we should probably stop this line of discussion . :zipper_mouth_face:

This is already the case afaik. The issue is just that not much app developers use them, and if they do, they hard-coded “if DE == Unity then use these alerts” even though Ubuntu Gnome also supports them.

Does someone of the desktop theme know if apps like slack will “support” these alerts on Ubuntu with Gnome soon?

With a concept on the way I’m thinking something along the lines of an icon overlay. Less of an additive but more like an actual Gaussian blur of the entire icon and slapping a number right-smack-dab in the middle.

This would look a bit more modern and sophisticated than the existing method

Aren’t alerts taken care of by the notification section of gnome? But it makes sense . I think a similar experience you a thinking of is already in D2D .

Considering that D2D would always have its development much earlier than they’d be (ever) implemented in Ubuntu dock, and also that D2D would have people involved in its development, new additions etc, who are users/connected to other distros (who might never use Ubuntu), D2D would be much superior to Ubuntu dock at a given time period.

Considering the easiness of forking (remastering) the Ubuntu distro, should you (Ubuntuu team) be worried of such a forked distro (taking over the glory) with the same top panel and D2D (with freedom of configuration) instead of with Ubuntu dock (without the freedom to configuration)?

(Any questions asked here, https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/issues, would go straight to the authors of D2D, whereas any questions asked at Ubuntu Forums would (tried to be) answered by other users - developers don’t look in there.)

There seems to be attention to the dock theming in the themes thread . With D2D should the use system theme option take care of the docks theme?