How to un-italicize desktop icon symlink text

Tips and Tricks
1

Plasma 5 italicizes the titles of desktop icons that are symlinks, such as applications. I personally feel that this looks inconsistent and takes away from the clean, traditional appearance.

To disable this, you can run this shell command (may need to be run as root):

sed -i '/font.italic: model.isLink/d' /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/FolderItemDelegate.qml

If you’d like to return the italicized symlinks, use this:

sed -i '386ifont.italic: model.isLink' /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/FolderItemDelegate.qml

You will need to logout for these changes to take effect.

I’d love to see this as an option in settings and I might try to make my own KCM module with it included.

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2

FWIW I don’t see this being accepted upstream. I already tried a few months ago and even submitted patches for the multiple components that would need to be patched, but the work was rejected. See 461450 – Get rid of italic text for links.

3

Understandable. I’m going to still work on the KCM because I’d love to get into contributing some day and it’d be good practice. Thanks Nate!

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4

I don’t see the point of italicising it, it is obvious it is a symlink without the italics. It looks more like a solution in search of a problem, or, a “we can do this, so lets do it”

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5

KDE already has a large, modular settings panel. I think it’d be a nice customization option. Only gotta change one QML file

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6

So this is still not considered to be an issue that needs to be changed, an option added? With all the customizability of Plasma this is one sticking point that is outright weird. It serves no purpose as links already have clearly visible icon badges and it only adds visual clutter to the UI. Italic font just doesn’t work and look well in a desktop UI.

7

For what it’s worth - just quickly scanning around, I don’t think I’ve seen any proposals that balance the overall design concerns raised in comment 8 here: 461450 – Get rid of italic text for links, while accounting for keeping the interface consistent and predictable (differences in behavior between desktop icons and Dolphin tend to produce lots of confusion and reports).

8

Thanks for checking. I can disable italics for links on the desktop by editing a file somewhere but not in Dolphin? That is inconsistent and confusing :slight_smile:

9

I agree with you, the italicized symlinks just don’t fit with the clean, traditional look of Plasma. I tried that command, and it worked perfectly for me. It’s nice to get rid of the italics without messing with the rest of the theme. I’m all for having more options like this in the settings, so if you end up creating that KCM module, I’d definitely be curious to try it out!

10

It bothers me how some people can be obtuse and disingenuous just to defend their point. One of the devs (I think he was a dev) said:

“I am sorry, but I disagree with the basic premise of this bug report that there is something fundamentally wrong with using italic text. There is a reason it was used for over four hundred years and is still widely used today.”

Italic was used for over four hundred years in computer UI??? Dude… we’re talking about computer UI, not flipping print. Italic is fine on a printed page but not in a computer UI, on a computer screen. I get it you love italic for some reason, but least we should have an option to change it. I can see the arrows just fine, thank you. This insistence oh having italic links is just genuinely bizarre.

11

I agree symlinks in italic are unreadable.
I suspect the feature useful for developers, and as kde is developed by developers to develop kde, likely it won’t be changed.

it’s easy to fix, just commenting out two lines.

grab the source from your distro, not from git. for fedora :

dnf download --source dolphin

search for “italic”, and this file pops up.

/src/kitemviews/kfileitemlistwidget.cpp

then comment out where it adds the italics.

QFont KFileItemListWidgetInformant::customizedFontForLinks(const QFont &baseFont) const
{
    // The customized font should be italic if the file is a symbolic link.
    QFont font(baseFont);
  //  font.setItalic(true); 
    return font;
}

and another one

QFont KFileItemListWidget::customizedFont(const QFont &baseFont) const
{
    // The customized font should be italic if the file is a symbolic link.
    QFont font(baseFont);
    // font.setItalic(data().value("isLink").toBool());
    return font;
}

then compile it. I was using rpmbuild for the correct flags and whatnot but I find just straight cmake works fine. I just sudo cp the new dolphin binary to /bin

I compile in a toolbox to keep things tidy.

each time dolphin gets some little update, your binary will get wiped, so be aware.

I update once a fortnight, and have a script that grabs the source rpm, unpacks it, and opens the files I want to tweak, and then I can just paste in my tweaks, and have a little poke around at the same time.

I suppose the next step would be to add an if…then and a check box in the settings but I’m not a developer and can’t be arsed.