How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

Smoerrebroed · 2013-10-07 17:05:11

Hi All,

with the most recent update to GNOME 3.10, this setting

dconf write /desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style icons

is no longer working (deprecated according to GTK documentation). Unfortunately the docs don't say how this behaviour can be controlled now. Does anybody know?

Thanks for any pointers. I might seem unimportant, but I'd really like to reclaim all the space that's being used by text that I don't ready anyway.

Cheers

Smoerrebroed

Last edited by Smoerrebroed (2013-10-07 17:05:24)

ulukai · 2013-10-07 20:19:34

I'm in the same boat. I want the text to disappear as well, I'm so used to seeing only icons and not text for some buttons and no text for others.
Besides that, I noticed that the key menus-have-icons doesn't work anymore either.

So now Gnome devs took away my icons in menus and gave me unwanted text on buttons instead... Just great, thanks guys! :-(

Last edited by ulukai (2013-10-07 20:43:05)

Smoerrebroed · 2013-10-07 20:55:41

Welcome to the club.

I also noticed the key you mention. In my system it looks like it actually doesn't exist anymore since can no longer reset it to default (and hence remove the bold typeface). Seems like dconf-editor doesn't know what to do with this key.

ulukai · 2013-10-07 21:23:14

I have been looking for a solution both myself and online, but to no avail. I found the GTK3 docs you mentioned as well, but there doesn't seem to be obvious alternatives...

pedromj · 2013-10-08 01:09:06

I have been always from "GNOME way" side but this upgrade is totally horrible for me. The close button in the windows is horribly ugly, the toolbars are ugly (I also prefer not having the text, although it is good for beginners, I am not anymore), the menus are slow to use (icons help using menus), the new combined status menu screws me (I can not change my IM status). This is finally the release that will make me swift to other DE or WM and it makes me sad.

ooo · 2013-10-08 07:35:59

gtk-toolbar-style = GTK_TOOLBAR_ICONS in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini has worked for me in the past. Although now that you mentioned it seems like I'm getting texts on some icons as well, for example 'Load' 'Save' and 'Undo' in gedit. I'm pretty sure those weren't there before the update.

looks like they have actually disabled this: link
actually it doesn't bother me that much with the certain applications I'm using but still a dumb move

although for me that's the least annoying annoyances about the upgrade unfortunately.

koroki · 2013-10-08 11:53:40

I'm in disagreement with the last changes in gnome-shell. I'm very fan of gnome-shell, but today I think gnome team cross the line that they never do. The icons in the menus was a important fact in gnome, for me.

The aparence of nautilus is a other bad thing...

pedromj · 2013-10-08 12:32:28

The new appearance of GNOME applications (including nautilus) is not very good but, as it is more efficient with screen space, we can get used to it. However, the functional flaws and lacks, together with the silent dropping of APIs without maintaining them deprecated during at least a release has been too much annoying for users and developers (including me), and many of them is leaving their work (notice that the number of GNOME extensions is being reduced by each release).

GNOME core developers should have a clearer police for what is fair to change between versions and what should be first deprecated during, for example, one year (two cycles). I'm not claiming them to support deprecated APIs but not to remove existing functionality without leaving time to developers to upgrade their extensions.

Also, it is sad to remember that GNOME 3.0 was much better and had much more extensions than 3.10. Maybe it had some stability problems, but very few compared with the succeeding releases.

Finally we have an officially stable release that is painful and useless due to missing extensions and a lot of re-introduced old and annoying bugs. This does not reflect a good desktop manager, and I am very sad saying this because I loved the simplicity offered by GNOME 3.x.

Unia · 2013-10-08 14:27:14

pedromj wrote:

the silent dropping of APIs without maintaining them deprecated during at least a release...

Erhm... all those stock button with icons you prefer are still available in the API...

pedromj · 2013-10-08 14:35:03

I was not just talking about icons in menus or text in toolbars. GNOME 3.10 has (as with many versions) also dropped and/or modified some APIs without retaining backward compatibility (deprecation) for a relatively short time (1 or 2 release cycles).

ooo · 2013-10-08 14:42:46

Does anybody know how you're supposed to resize windows without decorations and without using modifier key? Have they seriously just made it impossible as well?

EDIT: this depens on your openbox theme. mine had borders set to 0 and only had the bottom handle. with new gnome applications, openbox only draws the border, but removes the handle and titlebar.
if your openbox theme has any border, you can resize "decorationless" windows just fine

Last edited by ooo (2013-10-09 21:28:56)

pedromj · 2013-10-08 14:46:05

There is a hidden (transparent) decoration around the windows that you can use to resize windows.

Vrantheo · 2013-10-08 15:20:43

pedromj wrote:

There is a hidden (transparent) decoration around the windows that you can use to resize windows.

I don't comprehend why the question above was ever filed at all. Aren't we taught to just think about EDGES of windows?

ooo · 2013-10-08 16:26:03

pedromj wrote:

There is a hidden (transparent) decoration around the windows that you can use to resize windows.

ah ok, I'm not using gnome shell, but openbox with mostly gnome applications and ob just draws the window borderless, so there's absolutely nothing to grab on. you can't even force the decorations via rc.xml
sorry about dumb question and offtopic

Last edited by ooo (2013-10-08 16:26:59)

pedromj · 2013-10-08 21:55:30

It may be possible for you to tell OB not to listen applications when they request to be borerless. If you find how, please let us know.

koroki · 2013-10-09 09:10:45

Is there any option to recover the icons in the menus?

pedromj · 2013-10-09 09:22:08

It is precisely what we are discussing here. The option has been removed from gnome-settings-daemon so you cannot enable them. What I do not really know is whether the option was removed by mistake (bug) or it was intentional (design decision).

ulukai · 2013-10-09 14:52:41

pedromj wrote:

It is precisely what we are discussing here. The option has been removed from gnome-settings-daemon so you cannot enable them. What I do not really know is whether the option was removed by mistake (bug) or it was intentional (design decision).

As it is dropped from GTK 3.10 and the documentation clearly states that this is deprecated, it will be an intentional change. Don't ask me why...
And the fact that they KNOW that it is a controversial decision and they do this silently without mentioning in the release notes or what so ever makes it even worse...

Gnome devs: time to listen to your community! Not the first time that you had to change your mind about something after so many complaints from your users. Logoff button anyone?
Instead of taking away our options, add functionality and more options. We prefer this better than half-finished applications (tech previews) which also lack functionality... :-(
I'm seriously considering another DE right now.

Last edited by ulukai (2013-10-09 14:54:34)

koroki · 2013-10-09 15:04:22

ulukai wrote:

pedromj wrote:
It is precisely what we are discussing here. The option has been removed from gnome-settings-daemon so you cannot enable them. What I do not really know is whether the option was removed by mistake (bug) or it was intentional (design decision).
As it is dropped from GTK 3.10 and the documentation clearly states that this is deprecated, it will be an intentional change. Don't ask me why...
And the fact that they KNOW that it is a controversial decision and they do this silently without mentioning in the release notes or what so ever makes it even worse...
Gnome devs: time to listen to your community! Not the first time that you had to change your mind about something after so many complaints from your users. Logoff button anyone?
Instead of taking away our options, add functionality and more options. We prefer this better than half-finished applications (tech previews) which also lack functionality... :-(
I'm seriously considering another DE right now.

I'm very sad to read this... For me is really important the icons in the menus.

Do you think that any extension can solve that? I think no because is GTK feature, but ...

pedromj · 2013-10-09 17:01:02

Despite the thoughts of GNOME developers, this problem is huge. If you do not like GNOME you can shift to another DE (a custom one based on a plain WM) but changes to GTK+, like this one, implies that every application will be screwed.

I liked GNOME and many GTK+ applications but after the anger I felt when upgraded to GNOME 3.10 I decided to prepare a DM based on Fluxbox and customized for my needs. However, as most of the graphical applications I use are made with GTK+, the problem is still there. It makes me sad and very angry.

ulukai · 2013-10-09 21:15:17

pedromj wrote:

Despite the thoughts of GNOME developers, this problem is huge. If you do not like GNOME you can shift to another DE (a custom one based on a plain WM) but changes to GTK+, like this one, implies that every application will be screwed.
I liked GNOME and many GTK+ applications but after the anger I felt when upgraded to GNOME 3.10 I decided to prepare a DM based on Fluxbox and customized for my needs. However, as most of the graphical applications I use are made with GTK+, the problem is still there. It makes me sad and very angry.

You're right! All GTK apps will appear iconless no matter what DE you're running... And that's bad, take a look at LibreOffice Writer for example. Long menus with no icons Same goes for GIMP. The visual element is totally gone and you have to start reading every word instead of recognizing a simple icon.

To upset you all some more: an Arch user jjacky wrote a blog article about it where it states that Gnome devs were fully aware of this issue before the release. Fortunately he also suggested a solution, but that will require you to do some work... Read the article here: http://jjacky.com/2013-10-08-fixing-the … 0-upgrade/

I found this information in another thread, see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1334870

multixrulz · 2013-10-09 21:36:32

It gets worse.

GtkStock has also been deprecated, which just proves that this was fully intentional and they have absolutely no intention of going back.

This annoys me a lot because I've always felt that gtk was a better choice than Qt, at least for my needs, so I ended up programming a few things in python3, and therefore gtk3 (I don't even know if pygtk works with python3). GtkStock has been great, because I get button labels PLUS icons PLUS translation. Now it's all going, and there'll be some substantial re-coding to do, just to fix what GNOME broke. I had plans to write apps including webkit-gtk too, but with the current GNOME/GTK insanity it seems like a bad idea.

I guess I'll sit around and wait for a while to see what happens, but I suspect I'll eventually have to drop gtk3 in favour of gtk2 (if I can get it to work with python3) or Qt.

All this because the GNOME mob have some silly desire to be iOS. I won't be surprised to see icons-only become the new fad someday...

mrunion · 2013-10-09 22:18:57

It doesn't really matter as I'm a "nobody" in the Gnome world. But I sent the Gnome Board an email sarcastically thanking them for taking away peoples' choices and ruining other things that people have worked on. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, but any developer worth their salt knows that once you publish an accepted interface, you treat it as immutable.

Again, I'm sure it got deleted without a glance, but after using Gnome since I started using Linux in 1998, I'm looking for something else!

pedromj · 2013-10-09 22:33:17

It has been crazy, there are many GREAT apps based on GTK and from now they will start to suck a bit (or even a lot) more. As you did, I can enumerate some of the great applications that benefit a lot from icons and compact toolbars: GIMP, LibreOffice, Inkscape, Evolution (not so great), and last, but not least, Firefox and Chromium.

It is clear that for small tools and toys, specially those new simple apps like Music, Photos, etc., the icons in menus may be too much "old-days" interface but as soon as you get a more complex interface, it is extensively demonstrated that icons are helpful and sometimes a must.

I hope, from the bottom of my heart, GNOME developers to withdraw their decision and return icons to menus and toolbar view settings. However, as I mentioned before, this has been a major setback for me and I will continue with my transition to a desktop based on Fluxbox and I think that now begins my personal hate to GNOME and its developers.

iskandr · 2013-10-09 23:24:03

Wow, this is really a horrible decision by the gnome devs. I never understood why an important feature like menus_have_icons was always disabled by default and why it was neccessary turn it on in some hidden menu, but now it is completely gone? I'm really disappointed, since I also like those visual elements in menus that have a lot of entries. Just like the new notifications area (and missing network icon), this is not what I consider an improvement of usability.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-07 17:05:11

How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#2 2013-10-07 20:19:34

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#3 2013-10-07 20:55:41

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#4 2013-10-07 21:23:14

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#5 2013-10-08 01:09:06

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#6 2013-10-08 07:35:59

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#7 2013-10-08 11:53:40

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#8 2013-10-08 12:32:28

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#9 2013-10-08 14:27:14

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#10 2013-10-08 14:35:03

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#11 2013-10-08 14:42:46

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#12 2013-10-08 14:46:05

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#13 2013-10-08 15:20:43

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#14 2013-10-08 16:26:03

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#15 2013-10-08 21:55:30

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#16 2013-10-09 09:10:45

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#17 2013-10-09 09:22:08

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#18 2013-10-09 14:52:41

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#19 2013-10-09 15:04:22

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#20 2013-10-09 17:01:02

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#21 2013-10-09 21:15:17

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#22 2013-10-09 21:36:32

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#23 2013-10-09 22:18:57

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#24 2013-10-09 22:33:17

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

#25 2013-10-09 23:24:03

Re: How to hide toolbar text in GNOME 3.10

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