Geany 1.38 has been upgraded to GTK3 which has a different default theme from GTK2. But Google should be able to find many GTK themes and instructions to install them on Windows.

I think the result looks quite good both for the light and dark variant. Maybe Windows binaries could use this theme too.

That is of course a personal preference, perhaps the Windows binary maker prefers the GTK default theme.

Certainly yours is more "GTK2-ish" and what users would be used to.

@alexnerd123 Just curious, have you tried this theme on Windows or are you just commenting the macOS screenshots? I'd be curious if it looks good on Windows and if it doesn't look too far from how other Windows applications look.

No, you don't have to recompile Geany. I'm unfortunately not familiar with how GTK works on Windows but in principle you have to place the theme (the Prof-Gnome directory I linked above) to place (1) and edit `settings.ini` at place (2) to set Prof-Gnome as the used theme. Now the question is where (1) and (2) are on Windows. For linux you can check e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK

Sorry, I followed the instructions on that page, and I don't have a single file named "gtk.css", or any relevant "settings.ini" (neither for GTK, nor geany) anywhere on my filesystem. I confirmed this with the "everything" program, scanning my entire C drive. It would be one thing to create some "temp/test" css files, and repoint geany to them, but theres no ini file to edit!

I didn't explicitly install gtk3 when I installed geany 1.38 the other day. It just "came with it". That, plus the fact that 1.36 still works fine with gtk2, makes me think that geany1.38 has all the "3-ness" built in to it, inside its install dir. Although, poking around, I dont see anything. The closest I see is `INSTALL_DIR\share\themes\Default\gtk-3.0\gtk-keys.css`, which looks to be more for keybindings, not for tweaking graphics

For reference, I have geany1.36 installed as `C:\Program Files (x86)\Geany` and 1.38 as `C:\Users\myusername\Geany 1.38`, which is how I'm able to "side load" them. In other words, 1.36 is installed system wide, and 1.38 is just in my home directory. Which, I would think, would limit the scope of where geany is pulling gtk3 from.

Okay, that works (For reference, anyone in the future trying to emulate my steps, I had to create the `gtk-3.0` directory in `INSTALL_DIR\share`, then create the settings.ini file) . Its certainly an improvement! Its a little more bloated than gtk2, but not by much. I aligned the tops of the document lists, and set a green line to index them. Its certainly usable.

I dont "quite" like the "cartoon-y" look of it. How everything is gentle, and rounded. Like, instead of checkboxes with actual checks inside of actual boxes, now I get beveled edges and red floodfill for "checked", and white for "unchecked". Also, in the document list on the left, I no longer have lines between documents (except for the active document). The inactive documents just flood and blend together. Unless you hover, then its a "slightly" different shade of grey

Now, this is totally a personal preference! I like the clean crisp feels. I prefer "old fashioned, cold, sharp, ugly" UI's. Some people may prefer the gentler prettier warmer UIs. And you know, thats just preference!!!

I'm not much of a GTK programmer (I've messed with it a tiny bit before). Is it easy/practical to "rip" whatever GTK-2 goodness 1.36 came with, and do this same rethemeing on 1.38, like Prof-Gnome?

Of course, much of my preference could come from the fast that, on windows, most everything else looks "old and crisp" anyways. On mac or ubuntu, everything looks "bubbly", so geany looks very in-place there. But on windows, pretty and bubbly sticks out like a sore thumb.

Its certainly one thing to have a preference about crisp, vs bubbly, but I think we can all agree that the extreme spacing is a little.... extreme :)

I'm stubborn enough, that I may just do that (I've been using geany religiously for.... 10 years??). Now that I know how to install themes to geany (and, thankfully, its "contained" to geany.... so I don't have to worry about system-wide fubars), if I can find some GTK3 themes that "look" like classic windows, I'll definitely share them for others

hmm.... no, I've definitely got all the files and dirs in the Prof-Gnome dir

``` PS C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0> dir -R

Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- d----- 2021-12-28 13:50 global-graphics d----- 2021-12-28 13:50 theme-colors -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 25383 COPYING -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 240 gtk-dark.css -a---- 2021-12-29 11:56 242 gtk.css -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 215739 main-dark.css -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 214270 main-light.css

Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0\global-graphics

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 28522 after-horizontal.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 5820 bullet-disabled.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 5073 bullet-symbolic.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 5832 bullet.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 1676 list-remove-symbolic.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 4320 Null.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 1899 object-select-symbolic.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 1913 object-select-symbolic@2.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2190 scale-slider-active.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2206 scale-slider-active@2.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2192 scale-slider-disabled.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2193 scale-slider-disabled@2.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2189 scale-slider-hover.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2188 scale-slider-hover@2.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2183 scale-slider.svg -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 2184 scale-slider@2.svg

Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0\theme-colors

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name ---- ------------- ------ ---- -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 5320 colors-dark.css -a---- 2021-12-28 13:50 5376 colors-light.css ```

For reference, here is 1.36 on GTK 2  More than just "me preferring it", this looks very native to windows. It looks like it belongs

This is 1.38, gtk3, out of the box  Its a little cartooney, which I dont like. But it also doesn't fit in very well to the rest of windows, and, the sidebar is wicked spaced out. To its credit tho, it still maintains usable checkboxes and radio buttons and other UI elements. My checkboxes are White-on-blue, grey-on-blue, and white

This is 1.38, gtk3, with Prof-Gnome  The sidebar is much, much, better (although not perfect). But! Other UI elements are worse. I no longer have a "greyed out" checkbox, and if you look closely, the circular radio buttons (like position left/right/bottom/right) are red squares plastered over a circular background

We discussed the default theme problem in https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/2592#issuecomment-695835322 when we switched to GTK3 on Windows initially. At this point, it was decided that it is probably ok to go with the default theme.

I don't mind much if bundle the "Prof-Gnome" theme and use it by default or just document the way how themes can be installed and used on Windows.

@alexnerd123 your installation of the theme is wrong: when modifying anything inside the Geany installation directory, it will be lost on the next upgrade or need to be replicated on each upgrade. The theme must go into: `C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\themes\Prof-Gnome` and the `settings.ini` must be located in `C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\gtk-3.0`. These locations will be read by GTK and are independent of the Geany installation directory.

Probably it's only me who would do this...

I can't make up my mind on whether we should add it to the FAQ on the website or the main documentation. Opinions?

Will try and post a screenshot tomorrow.

Agree with @kugel- regarding a "reasonable" default theme on Windows and Mac, but how to choose. On Mac I think its @techee`s choice since he is the one who will do it. Therefore on Windows its @eht16's choice, although that will probably result in a WIndows 7 theme, even though the indication is many Windows users are using Windows 10 ;-P

For Linux we should simply leave it alone, Geany properly follows the selected GTK desktop theme automatically, which is the theme selected by the desktop menus/prefs app/look like me button/whatever the desktop provides. We should not attempt to provide anything, it will almost certainly be overridden or conflict.

And on all platforms `geany.css` is there for tweaks of things the theme doesn't define or defines badly.

Here we go:

#### B00merang-Project/Windows-10: 

#### Prof-Gnome without SVG support: ![Uploading geany_windows_7_theme_prof_gnome_no_svg.png…]()

#### Prof-Gnome *with* SVG support:  

All screenshots are made with current Geany master on a Windows 7 VM with the classic Windows theme (I'm old and like the also old Windows look or rather I don't like the new themes even more).

My two cents: - the B00merang-Project/Windows-10 theme has too few contrasts and is hard to use - the Prof-Gnome theme looks pretty good, I can include the librsvg library if we decide to bundle the theme

Yes! Best theme ever and so modern: 

@techee has prof-gnome light and dark (at least he showed them both above) so how does prof-gnome svg dark look on windows?

Remember that Futurama episode where Bender plays God, and ends up killing everyone? And God is all, "If you've done things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

I think its a similar thing here. On Linux (I use stock ubuntu.... I feel like, every time I theme, or customize, linux, it all goes down hill for me. So I stick to the beaten path) and mac, it fits it seamlessly. And on windows, its been perfectly native for, a long time.

@eht16 I like the B00merang-Project/Windows-10 look best so far. It doesn't "quite" look like GTK2, but its close to native (I wonder if the low contrast is bcz of windows 7, vs windows 10. I suspect that 7 is a dying art). "Prof-Gnome with SVG support" is pretty, but doesn't look native. The settings menu itself isn't bad. I don't like the pretty blue checkboxes, I like the flat crisp black-and-white ones better, but, thats not a hill worth dying on. Looking at the menu bars tho, yours look very out-of-place on windows 

On geany 1.36/GTK2, it looks so native, that you wouldn't even know to think about how native it is (see Bender being God again) 

Although I do enjoy the windows 95 / mac OS april fools prank. A lot of my coworkers use mac (I can't stand it myself, to each their own) and I would CRY laughing if you did that to them. (I may have some scripting to do, and some backdoor SSH keys to plop in...... and only 3 months to do it.....)

By the way, I tried the Chicago95 theme on the mac and there's a problem on HiDPI screens - see below (mostly the tabs):

<img width="1270" alt="Screen Shot 2022-01-03 at 18 11 01" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/713965/147960486-1993b835-8ff6-4bcd-9600-d4bf3419a2f0.png">

Everything looks OK on normal resolution screens. This might be a bug in the macOS GTK backend and it might not be present on Windows but better test if the used theme looks well on HiDPI screens there. I even tried to generate `@2.png` files using this script ``` from PIL import Image import glob import os

for fname in glob.glob("*.png"): img = Image.open(fname) width, height = img.size im_resized = img.resize((width*2, height*2), Image.NEAREST) basename = os.path.splitext(fname)[0] im_resized.save(basename + "@2.png", "PNG") ``` but it didn't help.

SVG support on Windows is added in #3082. Then GTK and themes can use librsvg and so display SVG images. This is probably useful in general. @techee thanks for the pointer.

Just wondering, wouldn't it possibly fix the "win32" theme? The screenshot in #2592 really looks a bit broken but maybe it was because some SVG resource couldn't be read. If it worked, "win32" would be the best solution as it should be closest to user's native windows theme.

...

SVG support on Windows is added in #3082. Then GTK and themes can use librsvg and so display SVG images. This is probably useful in general. @techee thanks for the pointer.

Just wondering, wouldn't it possibly fix the "win32" theme? The screenshot in #2592 really looks a bit broken but maybe it was because some SVG resource couldn't be read. If it worked, "win32" would be the best solution as it should be closest to user's native windows theme.

I'll share a Windows installer snapshot from current master with the bundled librsvg library on the weekend, then someone with Windows 10/11 can easily test and provide a screenshot.

How does win32 on windows 10/11? Since I only use msys2 based builds since a few years I only know adwaita on Windows.

I cannot say as I only have a Windows 7 VM, as said above, the best I can do is to provide a new installer. I thought "the win32 theme" is the Adwaita theme or are these two different things?

Another idea in that discussion is to disable CSD to get native decorations.

CSD should be disabled by default on MSYS2 based on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778791

From my windows 11 testing I liked B00merang-Project/Windows-10 most. I'll check your tweaked Prof-Gnome again.

From my POV though, we should be objective and pick what fits to the rest of the OS if we pick a default theme. The user is free to chose more eye candy themes or more contrast ones afterwards.

@techee you can change to the toolbar icon size from within geany right?

In case anyone wants to test fancy themes on Windows himself, here are binaries from current GIT master including SVG support: https://download.geany.org/snapshots/geany-1.39git20220110_setup.exe https://download.geany.org/snapshots/geany-plugins-1.39git20220110_setup.exe

From my POV though, we should be objective and pick what fits to the rest of the OS if we pick a default theme. The user is free to chose more eye candy themes or more contrast ones afterwards.

I just want to note that I don't know how to achieve this: setting a GTK theme for Geany while still providing the user the possibility to change the pre-installed default. If we want to do this, someone needs to implement it.

For me it would be also ok to just let the user change the theme herself (and provide the information how to do this, https://github.com/geany/www.geany.org/pull/40) **OR** bundle a chosen GTK theme and just use this, as done for macOS.

@techee method seems great assuming it works. As a fallback I would have suggested to create `c:\Users\techet\AppData\Local\gtk-3.0\settings.ini` from within the installer, but that would work only for the current user.

...

that would work only for the current user.

That's how GTK themes work on Linux, yes, but are multi-user Windows installations really that common on desktop PCs?

Even if, I won't modify the installer to modify the user's personal files. This is a no-go and should never be done. Never.

@techee's method sounds good and is much nicer.

How do we want to proceed here? I think there are two options: 1. leave the current Windows theming as is but document how to change the default theme (the howto is already available in https://github.com/geany/www.geany.org/pull/40) 2. include another theme in the installer and enable it by default

Option 1 would be the simplest and might suffice.

Option 2 would be better but we need to agree on which theme to include. If we do this, I would vote for @techee's variant of Prof-Gnome because it looks quite good (just my personal opinion of course) and more important we would have the same look and feel by default on macOS and Windows.

For me, consistent look to macOS is irrelevant, especially since the macOS theme was a personal choice of @techee. Consistent look to the rest of the OS out-of-the-box is important to me, on the other hand. So count this as a vote against Prof-Gnome and in favor of something like B00merang-Project/Windows-10

So count this as a vote against Prof-Gnome and in favor of something like B00merang-Project/Windows-10

But do you really find it native-looking? To me it looks pretty different than any native application (try to compare it with Notepad++ for instance). And have you tried how the dialog "Build->Set Build Commands" looks? A theme where you can't distinguish individual widgets isn't a good choice no matter how nice it looks (and to me it doesn't even look nice).

Don't get me wrong - if there were a theme that looked native and where individual widgets were distinguishable (which is the case with native applications), I'd vote to go for it. In fact, on macOS I previously used this theme

https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme

which in theory looked more native but it suffered from similar problems like the Windows 10 theme. Usability should have a priority over appearance IMO.

Usability should have a priority over appearance IMO.

For me, _configurability_ is the highest priority. User should be able to choose what he likes (a theme, if we discuss UI) and configure subtle nuances to his taste. I managed to set up Geany on Windows to my taste, but it was complicated, and required intensive search and a help from community (**elextr**-kun helped very much :)

@elextr, it was primarily trial-and-error: I edited **gtk.css** (in Geany itself), and looked to see what would happen. Unfortunately, there are not much comments it that css, and the file is quite large. But I can describe my experience. :)

@elextr, there is no default GTK theme on Windows, and no automatic updates, of course. I found this theme: https://github.com/vinceliuice/stylish-gtk-theme , copied it in **C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\gtk-3.0** , chosen one of the variants (Dark Jade) and tweaked it to make Geany look nice (to my taste :). Also I edited some lines in **geany.css**, but it's very little part of the style.

@elextr,

..hence my suggestion to add changes to geany.css

Hardly possible. **gtk.css** from _stylish_ is quite large, and I don't know which parts of it are needed, and which ones may be left out. Well, it seems that my way isn't regular, and shoudn't be recommended to general public, so to say. :) But the fact is, GTK3 allows UI customization via CSS, and a persistent user can find a solution for his needs, even if it's weakly documented. When I looked for a way to increase fonts in Viber for desktop, I found a similar solution: to set environment variable GTK_SCALE_FACTOR to the proper value. Similarly, when I switched from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I found an utility ("Advanced Font Changer") to change fonts and sizes in Windows UI. :) Et cetera...

Since nobody really said yes or no or what theme we should finally use, I just made #3129 to get some drive into this topic and hoping to get it done finally.

This PR includes the "Prof-Gnome" from our [geany/geany-osx](https://github.com/geany/geany-osx) repository and makes Geany look a lot better on Windows. Maybe not 100% perfect and native but usable.

To let you easily test: https://download.geany.org/snapshots/geany-1.39pr3129_setup.exe https://download.geany.org/snapshots/geany-plugins-1.39git20220220_setup.exe

I think I was pretty clear about my opinion, and why I prefer a near-native Windows theme over Prof-Gnome. Seems the message didn't make it through.

@kugel- given that the default style is very different between win 7 that @eht16 uses and win 10/11, which are you saying this is not "native" on? And have you any idea of a theme that is more "native"?

@kugel- you just say "not Prof-Gnome" but you don't say what would be better. When you first said above that you don't like Prof-Gnome, you didn't answer @techee's following answers.

So, I assumed it's not that important for you.

In the end, for me personally it doesn't matter much which theme we use, I don't use Windows except for building Geany. But I see that the current theme is probably annoying for anyone.

So, if you have a candidate, it's easy enough to replace the current one.

Win7 is EOL since two years already, not sure it should be considered much, although I think it has still lots of users?

Personally I would agree with both statements, but I don't use Geany on Windows at all, so am trying to not voice opinions.

I said one or two times that my favorite is B00merang-Project/Windows-10, which from my testing on Windows 11, looks really close to native.

Could you please post some screenshots comparing it e.g. to Notepad++? Because I'm seeing something completely different, i.e. that Prof-Gnome looks _much_ more native on Windows 11 (I'll post some screenshots in the evening, I don't have access to my Windows machine right now). To me it seems that Microsoft went very much in the direction of macOS appearance with Windows 11.

The checkboxes Prof-Gnome uses are white on blue background like in Windows native apps, the scrollbars are nearly identical to the Windows 11 style, maybe the only bigger difference are the buttons which on Windows 11 are a bit less rounded and less 3D but that's about it. Note that it still doesn't look completely native (and I don't think it's even possible for a theme to achieve this) but it doesn't scream "I'm from a different world" and the differences are subtle enough that nobody will open a bug report because of that I believe.

And, unlike B00merang-Project/Windows-10, you can tell individual widgets apart and I think it would be stupid to exchange a bug report called "New UI on windows is bloated and scaled up" for a bug report "New UI on windows is not usable because widgets are hard to distinguish".

Once again, I agree that a Windows theme should be as native as possible (though with Windows it's hard to tell what it is these days because there are the classical applications but also the web-like applications that look completely different plus every major Windows version ships with a different theme) but in addition the theme should be usable. From the themes I tried the Prof-Gnome theme satisfies these criteria the best for me right now.

Also note that I can make some minor tweaks to the theme if you don't like an appearance of some particular widget.

Me as a Windows 11 user, my Geany v1.38 works fine with Monokai gtk theme, it just look very nice!



Hello. I am using Geany from quite some years, both on Linux and Windows. I liked v1.36 more, but it did not scale up properly for HiDPI on Windows. Now v1.38 properly scales and all good. About this theming stuff: I downloaded all mentioned themes and simply extracted each one in C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\gtk-3.0\ and theme loads on Geany startup. I used the build from Feb 20, 2022.

HiDPI simply makes a complete mess of every theme. I am using 225% scale on 3840x2160 resolution. I will stick with adwaita in the future. This goes to settings.ini [Settings] gtk-theme-name=adwaita in the aforementioned folder.

Adwaita: 

Win32: 

B00merang-win10: 

sinner59-win10: 

sinner59-win10flat: 

zayronxio-win11: 

B00merang-win10acrylic: 

Also, did not like Prof-Gnome - it has some weird tints everywhere, like some very light shades of gray that look like white, but are not so, really annoying. So yeah, adwaita is the future for me. Eh.

So, today I played with modifying win32 theme and 1.38 build, here is the end result: 

I used about 1 hour to make gtk.css in about 30 lines of code. I don't know if I can copy-paste here, or how do you do that in GitHub. The only thing remaining is the right-click menu and show document list button, that have weird border. If you could share what GTK widget you have used for that. Thanks!

So, today I played with modifying win32 theme and 1.38 build, here is the end result:

The result looks quite nice but the tabs seem to be wrong - there seem to be not enough space for the close `X` button e.g. in the `keybindings.c` tab and the height of the selected tab seems to be wrong. (I remember I spent a considerable amount of time to make this work well for Prof-Gnome, it was pretty annoying, and I won't help you with this :-P)

Well, modifications of GTK theming affects Inkscape, and possibly other GTK apps. Looks like GTK is not designed for Windows. This was interesting experience. I propose to the Geany Windows maintainer to keep Adwaita as the default theme. If I do not like the default theme of next versions, I will compile Geany myself with another theme and use that. Can't mess up visuals of all GTK apps on the machine.

See https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/3063#issuecomment-1009446219 - you can have per-application themes and Geany definitely shouldn't modify the shared `settings.ini` common for all GTK apps. This also means that Geany can use a theme that suits best to its use of GTK widgets and this theme doesn't necessarily have to look good in other applications.

So, I have Geany\share\gtk-3.0\settings.ini and Geany\share\themes\win32mod\gtk-3.0\gtk.css and here is the result:

Well, no idea what may be wrong (I don't have access to a Windows machine right now and won't have it in the following two weeks so I can't test anything). But did you also delete the theme-setting stuff under `C:\Users\Name\AppData`?

I reinstalled the build from February 20, 2022, and modified slightly Prof-Gnome - redefined only base_bg_color theme_base_color menu_bg_color sidebar_bg_color to white and is much more bearable. Even acceptable. This is getting annoying - there is a difference in the theme depending on whether the files are in AppData\Local or in Geany\share.

Prof-Gnome theme in AppData\Local: 

Prof-Gnome theme in Geany\share: 

Why are the notebook tabs different size? I moved the theme files from AppData\Local into Geany\share. That is all.

Also I suggest you try the changes from this PR https://github.com/geany/geany-osx/pull/35 which makes some Windows-specific changes to the theme.

It's probably best to use a theme that looks most native to the platform (while being usable though)

- @ techee at https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/3063#issuecomment-1003573814

No, please no! I am on windows, and using Geany 1.38 for quite some months. And I very much love the non-windowsy look on linux applications.

It refreshes me to see some element of difference, and gives some sense of freedom to my eyes. Don't fall for this "foolish consistency" of _native themeing_

And also... the UI on my system ain't scaled up at all 🤔 ?


Another year later...luckily we got some more feedback even though it doesn't make the decision for a suitable default theme not easier.

Great!

I'm aware that some of the contributors of this issue are not happy with Prof-Gnome and might prefer Adwaita, Boomerang, Monokai or whatever else.

I just want to add that if someone doesn't like some concrete aspect of the theme like some color of some GUI element, I can tweak it a bit. I did it to some extent already (and also a bit more since the original discussion here) and it hopefully looks a bit more platform-neutral now (thankfully both macOS and Windows 11 default themes look very similar).

We do? I just looked and couldn't find anything?

I was referring to the not yet merged addition to the FAQs in https://github.com/geany/www.geany.org/pull/40.

Please use only 255,255,255 for light background, no 250,250,250 shades and the like ... or I'll find you :)

Seriously though, this is the stuff that kills projects. I am already eyeing out another open source project.

@nrikonomov

Seriously though, this is the stuff that kills projects.

Since Geany is an open source project the choice of default theme will be made by the person who contributes the change. Hopefully they will take others comments into consideration, but likely only those that are useful by proposing an actual default theme.

But they will probably ignore comments that do not, especially if they overreach by conflating project success with the choice of default theme, something which is configurable, irrespective of features and functionality.

I am already eyeing out another open source project.

To paraphrase Stallman:

"We make the software for our own purposes, and make it available for others to use and hope they find it useful. But we do not gain by their use, in fact it costs support effort. And if they decide to use another program we may be sad, but we do not lose anything."

Please use only 255,255,255 for light background, no 250,250,250 shades and the like ... or I'll find you :)

Regarding the light background, it was done here:

https://github.com/geany/geany-osx/commit/9e2ec78fbbabc45717c30fc56a724a09b9...

Also for Windows Enrico is planning to use

https://github.com/geany/geany-osx/pull/35

to use true black for text.

the horrors of blinding whites of 2020s

We are talking about backgrounds of various text fields like entries etc., not the whole UI. Dialogs, window frames, etc. will be gray.

repeated comment @techee - i think there was some network issue on your side - so comment got posted twice. please delete one of those 😇

I'm close to give up on this.

Would be a shame.

It's more like that @nrikonomov's comment kills our efforts to find a better solution for most users.

I'm not sure what exactly @nrikonomov meant, I thought that with the "project killing" comment he meant the use of those "250,250,250 shades" which I fixed in the Prof-Gnome theme some time ago. And he seemed to like the modified theme as mentioned in https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/3063#issuecomment-1272315353.

It's hard to satisfy everyone but to my eyes the Prof-Gnome theme is neutral enough so it shouldn't offend too many people and fixes the OP's problem (with which I agree). If someone has some more constructive comments than "I don't like it", I can try to update the theme (like I did with the white color). I'd suggest switching to this theme - and if Geany's issue tracker gets filled by complaints of people that we killed Geany, we can always "revive" it by switching back to Adwaita.

we can't please all the people all the time

So the best way is to give the user convenient tools that allow to customize the program to the maximum possible extent. With Geany, it's possible, but not so well documented, and requires some hacker skills. :)

hmm.... no, I've definitely got all the files and dirs in the Prof-Gnome dir

PS C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0> dir -R


    Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----       2021-12-28     13:50                global-graphics
d-----       2021-12-28     13:50                theme-colors
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50          25383 COPYING
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50            240 gtk-dark.css
-a----       2021-12-29     11:56            242 gtk.css
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50         215739 main-dark.css
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50         214270 main-light.css


    Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0\global-graphics


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50          28522 after-horizontal.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           5820 bullet-disabled.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           5073 bullet-symbolic.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           5832 bullet.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           1676 list-remove-symbolic.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           4320 Null.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           1899 object-select-symbolic.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           1913 object-select-symbolic@2.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2190 scale-slider-active.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2206 scale-slider-active@2.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2192 scale-slider-disabled.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2193 scale-slider-disabled@2.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2189 scale-slider-hover.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2188 scale-slider-hover@2.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2183 scale-slider.svg
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           2184 scale-slider@2.svg


    Directory: C:\Users\USERNAME\Geany 1.38\share\themes\Prof-Gnome\gtk-3.0\theme-colors


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           5320 colors-dark.css
-a----       2021-12-28     13:50           5376 colors-light.css

For reference, here is 1.36 on GTK 2 [767×582 png58 kB More than just "me preferring it", this looks very native to windows. It looks like it belongs

This is 1.38, gtk3, out of the box  Its a little cartooney, which I dont like. But it also doesn't fit in very well to the rest of windows, and, the sidebar is wicked spaced out. To its credit tho, it still maintains usable checkboxes and radio buttons and other UI elements. My checkboxes are White-on-blue, grey-on-blue, and white

This is 1.38, gtk3, with Prof-Gnome  The sidebar is much, much, better (although not perfect). But! Other UI elements are worse. I no longer have a "greyed out" checkbox, and if you look closely, the circular radio buttons (like position left/right/bottom/right) are red squares plastered over a circular background

omg... gtk2 looks so much better

@alexnerd123, how did you fix the red checkboxes with the dark theme? I tried putting librsvg on \bin but it didnt work

Yeah, I'm afraid it's time to create the 2.1 milestone ;-).

I don't see how it should get better by postponing to 2.1.

OK, I just thought it kind of died because of different opinions but I'm all for it myself.

I don't have enough time and motivation to play with themes on windows anytime soon. Go with whatever you agreed.

While I NAK'd #3129 on based on my preference (so biased) I was also clear that I won't block it (or any other theme) as long as we swap out Adwaita.

So I'm in favor of merging #3129 over post-poning.

Closed #3063 as completed via #3129.