This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it). GNOME/GTK devs, as usual, got confused and implemented something no one wants. Either you provide a proper and defined way to theme like KDE does or take the windows/mac route and tell developers to recreate any custom themed control from scratch.
Instead, they go around saying that there is only one GTK theme and then leave a convenient backdoor open for hacks with a nudge and a wink. Either open the front door and roll out a carpet or close all the doors and windows.
It is indeed easy to read this and conclude gtk3 has lost its way. eg. I remember in gtk1.2 days, there were a crapton of themes and they did radical things, and that was kind of the point.
> This is more of an indictment of the way GTK3+ handles theming (or lack of it).
How do you think GTK+3 handles theming (or lacks handling for it)? It sounds like you're confusing GTK+3 theming for GTK+2 theming (which was based on "engines", which were quite a mess). Now it's very "proper and defined", it's accomplished with a strict subset of CSS which has fairly consistent behaviour.
I personally don't see the point in elaborate theming systems (I'd prefer to just have control over the colours, and maybe one or two of the spacing variables), and it is obvious that they cost a lot of cycles at run time....
but GTK+3's theming system is not braindead, it's just ambitious.
Um no, because gtk/gnome devs have explicitly stated that Adwaita is the one true gtk theme. The name "Adwaita" reflects it. In GTK3+, the concept of themes does not exist. This is why you need 3rd party tools to change them. This is why 3rd party themes break stuff that this article complains about.
> I personally don't see the point in elaborate theming systems (I'd prefer to just have control over the colours, and maybe one or two of the spacing variables), and it is obvious that they cost a lot of cycles at run time....
Plenty of good reasons - sometimes people like to shift common controls to be more familiar with their habits. Sometimes it's handy to shrink things like title bars. Sometimes the awful text rendering on Linux systems needs a bit of tweaking not to drive you mad...
Instead, they go around saying that there is only one GTK theme and then leave a convenient backdoor open for hacks with a nudge and a wink. Either open the front door and roll out a carpet or close all the doors and windows.