[QUESTION] Light vs Light Blue / Dark vs Dark Blue

[Mecanik]

Question

I have a small issue when testing the styles. This is my short code to switch styles and debug:

void MainWindow::on_actionLight_triggered()
{
    QFile f(":/light/stylesheet.qss");

    if (!f.exists())   {
        printf("Unable to set stylesheet, file not found\n");
    }
    else   {
        f.open(QFile::ReadOnly | QFile::Text);
        QTextStream ts(&f);
        qApp->setStyleSheet(ts.readAll());
    }
}
void MainWindow::on_actionDark_triggered()
{
    QFile f(":/dark/stylesheet.qss");

    if (!f.exists())   {
        printf("Unable to set stylesheet, file not found\n");
    }
    else   {
        f.open(QFile::ReadOnly | QFile::Text);
        QTextStream ts(&f);
        qApp->setStyleSheet(ts.readAll());
    }
}

void MainWindow::on_actionLight_Blue_triggered()
{
    QFile f(":/light-blue/stylesheet.qss");

    if (!f.exists())   {
        printf("Unable to set stylesheet, file not found\n");
    }
    else   {
        f.open(QFile::ReadOnly | QFile::Text);
        QTextStream ts(&f);
        qApp->setStyleSheet(ts.readAll());
    }
}

void MainWindow::on_actionDark_Blue_triggered()
{
    QFile f(":/dark-blue/stylesheet.qss");

    if (!f.exists())   {
        printf("Unable to set stylesheet, file not found\n");
    }
    else   {
        f.open(QFile::ReadOnly | QFile::Text);
        QTextStream ts(&f);
        qApp->setStyleSheet(ts.readAll());
    }
}

It's ugly, but for testing it's ok. Here are the issues:

• Light vs Light Blue has no difference, for instance checkboxes are black between them.
• Dark vs Dark Blue has no different, for instance checkboxes are blue between them (which is OK, no complaints, but then what's the difference between them?)

The resources are loaded and present, so I don't understand the issue.

Please advise, much appreciated!

[Mecanik]

Normally, I was expecting:

Light: https://github.com/Alexhuszagh/BreezeStyleSheets/blob/main/assets/light-blue.png
Light Blue: https://github.com/Alexhuszagh/BreezeStyleSheets/blob/main/assets/light-blue-alt.png

[Inverted-E]

There is no difference between "light" and "light-blue' or "dark" and "dark-blue". They are aliases of each other.

At the beginning of this project, the blue themes were the only ones and as such they were called "light" and "dark". When additional colors were added, it became apparent that "light" and "dark" should become "light-blue" and "dark-blue". To keep backwards compatability with existing projects though, we didn't want to just rename them. So they were aliased. The "light" and "dark" themes exist solely for backwards compatability and are not recommended for use in new projects.

If you want blue checkboxes on the light theme, you should use "light-blue-alt". There are a few other differences with the "-alt" themes though, so if the only change you want is the blue checkboxes, you can take the "light-blue" and the "light-blue-alt" JSON files and combine/edit them as needed. Take a look at the "light-blue" and "light-blue-alt" theme JSON files and you'll see a few differences in them. If you want the "light-blue" theme with blue checkboxes, I think you need to edit line 31 ("checkbox:light":).

Once you've edited the JSON files, you can rebuild the themes as below, using whichever flags are relevant for your use-case.

python configure.py

[Mecanik]

Thanks for the in-depth explanation, appreciated. But this is a slap in the face... why overcomplicate things so much? Why not distribute only "light-blue" and "dark-blue" and that's it? To be honest, I don't want to play around with JSON config for a stylesheet... the idea is to grab the style and use it as is. Granted if you want to change the background like I did, you just replace a hex color.

Overall this is such a nice style, and easy to integrate, but there's a lot of confusion in the documentation and usage.

Thanks!

[Inverted-E]

"Why not distribute only "light-blue" and "dark-blue" and that's it?" - For exactly the reason I mentioned above, backwards compatibility. If we stop distributing "light" and "dark" then it can break existing projects that rely on them. So it's not overcomplicating it, it's trying to cater to as many users as possible, both new and existing. To do this, compromises must be made.

Remember that everyone has their own nuances and minor tweaks that they may want for their project. We can't cater to everyone's every wish, which is why we provide the ability for anyone to easily reconfigure the JSON themes and then the heavy lifting to actually build the themes is done for you by configure.py.