Provide theme inheritance information in Godot's UI control properties.

[thathurtabit]

Problem

There is currently very little information given to a Godot developer regarding theme inheritance.

This leads to confusion when a section of Godot's UI suggests there is no theme applied to an element, when there may be.

For example, if a developer applies a custom 'global' theme (screenshot)...

..but then looks at UI properties, it gives the impression there is no theme properties applied, when there could well be.

(Example of HBoxContainer node):

This can result in confusion and frustration as properties could be being applied - and may need to be overridden - but there is no information that states that this is the case.

Real world example

This can make things extra difficult for new users in particular - see this Bluesky thread.

Improvement suggestion

Where a UI Node is inheriting properties from a theme (always?), there should be a small, unobtrusive visual notification to the developer.

I.e. at the top of a Theme section, under the header:

• 'This node inherits properties from [theme.tres] theme' (or)
• 'This node inherits properties from default theme'

This should give the developer an indication that the visual properties they are seeing are defined elsewhere and may need to be overridden - if overriding is the only option to change the value.

[AThousandShips]

Those are overrides though, that override the ones defined in the theme, regardless of there being a custom theme those variables all have a theme value applied to them, be it from the default theme or a custom one, or using the theme set on the node itself (or an ancestor)

[thathurtabit]

I'd argue that Theme <empty> gives the impression that the theme for the node is empty - which is not the case; it is inheriting from another unspecified theme.

Mostly, I'd say the Godot editor is fairly intuitive to use, which is one of its main strengths, but I think the UI/theming is an area which would benefit from some more consideration.

A comparison would be CSS styling for the Web - and although I'm not suggesting Godot get anywhere near that level of info - debugging issues when information is obscured becomes much more difficult.

I.e. in this screenshot from Chrome's devtools, it shows which CSS values are inherited from where, and which values are being overridden.

[AThousandShips]

The tooltip specifies that it is inherited:

The Theme resource this node and all its Control and Window children use. If a child node has its own Theme resource set, theme items are merged with child's definitions having higher priority.

But again all of this is clear from reading the documentation on UI skinning

But I've not seen anyone struggle with this as far as I recall, but if it is a very common confusion it would make sense to add this in addition to the clear documentation

[thathurtabit]

Do you know if Godot has a regular UX feedback loop?
I.e. an overview of common pain points or praises for newcomers (or veterans) to Godot?
People may not always take the time to come to Github to create an issue or discussion, but maybe they'll fill in a quick feedback survey.

[AThousandShips]

I mean this is part of that, as well as the other community channels such as the forums, but bit hard to gauge people's reactions if they don't express them

[thathurtabit]

This is true, and making it easy for people to give feedback is useful. I'm from a web background mainly, and you may have seen surveys like: https://2024.stateofjs.com/en-US/usage/#js_new_features that attempts to get a high-level view of where the platform is in terms of what people are struggling with, and where people are satisfied. If Godot doesn't already have something like this, it would probably be useful.

[Calinou]

What I would probably do is make the Theme Overrides section display the inherited theme values when the override checkbox is unchecked. For instance, instead of seeing a default separation of 0 (which is not the default in the default project theme for Container), you'd see something like 4 instead. Ticking the checkbox would keep the value 4 but make it an override, so it would no longer follow the default project theme and you could change it later on.

There might be a technical or design reason why it's not done this way though. In this case, we could display the theme value in the tooltip instead.

[thathurtabit]

This would help for sure! I think just letting the developer know a theme property on the current node is active, i.e. we're trying to communicate: "you are seeing this value being applied to your current node" - and provide info as to where (i.e which theme) that's coming from.