I prefer the skin that I proposed in this patch.
Tell me if you think we should provide a more complete skin like this one:

Does the theme have to use PNGs? It would also be nice if the tabs could look more like Qt tabs like in https://store.kde.org/p/1193435/

Can you explain why this change should be done?
There's also a .directory file that shouldn't be there

Looks pretty nice to me. I have no objections.

My POV here is that I've been a fairly inactive maintainer of late, while Lionel has been contributing a lot of nice work to Yakuake. Freshing things up is fair game.

Kai's suggesting a good cleanup there. Other than that, a VDG opinion could be good. Also, if we end up adopting this patch, I suggest we make a beta release to get user feedback on a new default.

In D20189#441956, @ndavis wrote:

Does the theme have to use PNGs? It would also be nice if the tabs could look more like Qt tabs like in https://store.kde.org/p/1193435/

There is no PNG in breeze compact. PNGs that are visibles in this patch are those of current default theme because they are moved to another folder.

About tabs appearance, I agree with you but I think Breeze is not consistent and VDG should defines it.

Tabs in my theme look like Breeze Plasma theme and Kate tabs. In your skin it is the default Breeze Qt style (but dark which is not the default color of Konsole tabs).

Personnally I prefer those of Plasma because it matches better with dark content.

Do you know what VDG plans about appearance of tabbed windows ?

In D20189#442051, @broulik wrote:

Can you explain why this change should be done?
There's also a .directory file that shouldn't be there

I am sorry it was late when I submitted the patch. I didn't took the time to explain.

.directory files were already there and I probably added new ones.
Thank you to have noticed it, I am going to clean that.

FWIW, the VDG perspective on tabs in apps is generally that they should look tab-like. Konsole already has tab-like tabs and IMO Yakuake should too. @tcanabrava is in the middle of fixing Kate's tabs so they have a conventional appearance IIRC.

In D20189#442421, @ngraham wrote:

FWIW, the VDG perspective on tabs in apps is generally that they should look tab-like. Konsole already has tab-like tabs and IMO Yakuake should too. @tcanabrava is in the middle of fixing Kate's tabs so they have a conventional appearance IIRC.

If VDG think it should look like classic tabs I can take time to create another skin.

Still I don't understand why Plasma goes in one direction and applications in another.
Plasma tabs appearance (with a blue line that "underlines" the title) have the advantage to work fine when content is disconnected from the tab (eg. a window is disconnected of the taskbar).
At the same time I understand it will be very hard to make third party apps (chrome and firefox) look like that.

I've already made Qt Widget-like tabs for Breeze and Breeze Dark at these repos, so you can just borrow from those:

https://github.com/noahadvs/yakuake-breeze_perfect

https://github.com/noahadvs/yakuake-breeze_perfect_dark

In D20189#442453, @chauvin wrote:

Still I don't understand why Plasma goes in one direction and applications in another.

There are a lot of visual differences between Plasma and apps: Highlight effects, view background color, tab appearance, and others. I'm not sure about the historical reason either but I would like to see these unified by having each one adopt the best of the other. For example the Plasma highlight effect is much prettier and I think Apps could benefit. On the other hand, I think Plasma would be well-served by using a more tab-like tab appearance.

Plasma tabs appearance (with a blue line that "underlines" the title) have the advantage to work fine when content is disconnected from the tab (eg. a window is disconnected of the taskbar).
At the same time I understand it will be very hard to make third party apps (chrome and firefox) look like that.

Chrome and Firefox already use tablike tabs though. In general I'm not a fan of the "tabs disconnected from the content" paradigm. I think that tabs should be tabs and touch with the content. If the two are separated, then technically you're not talking about tabs at all, you're talking about a "Segmented control", which is heavily used in iOS and macOS, but which I'm not really a huge fan of because it becomes hard to tell the difference between it and a group of adjacent and mutually exclusive buttons.

In D20189#442515, @ndavis wrote:

I've already made Qt Widget-like tabs for Breeze and Breeze Dark at these repos, so you can just borrow from those:

https://github.com/noahadvs/yakuake-breeze_perfect

https://github.com/noahadvs/yakuake-breeze_perfect_dark

Thank you. I will work on a new skin this week end. I am not sure that tabs will look nice in compact mode.