Rename Seven in D8

It also sounded like there was some interest in either reworking or replacing the current seven theme for Drupal 8. Personally, I still love seven since it's arrival relieved a common problem I had of entering administrative mode with overbearing sidebars.

I love how clean seven is. I may be unaware of deep seated issues with the theme itself or other alternatives that might be a better solution in the future. So I guess the case needs to be made why seven isn't as good as some other administrative theme. Or why seven couldn't be made to include the benefits another theme has. Cost / Benefits analysis and all that.

As for a new name I like Core or Admin but I don't like CoreAdmin as much.

Does anyone have some actual real-world evidence that the name "Seven" is confusing..? Themes have silly names all the time. Like http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyeleven. I wouldn't expect that to self-destruct come January 2012 based on its name. Nor would I expect a theme called "Root Candy" to actually dispense sweets when used. :) Renaming it means updating a bunch of documentation that refers to Seven as the default administration theme. Not that this means we can't do it, but it does mean we should probably avoid it unless there's actually a good reason.

And I am -100 on radically revamping the admin theme in D8, personally (and the possibility of doing it should be discussed somewhere else, not in an issue about the name of said admin theme). We're going to have our hands full enough creating a new theme for the front-end alone. And It's one thing if the default front-end theme changes drastically from one version of Drupal to another (it will almost always be replaced in any serious Drupal site), but having to learn a new admin interface every single release would be incredibly annoying for re-training users. I'd prefer minor chrome tweaks and that kind of stuff to Seven in D8, personally.

Eight, is fine. Changing documentation is no issue, I will do that if no one else is up for it :) It was never a argument for changing things in the past, so I dont think it should be now.

Not sure what mgifford has in mind, but I can see us making a bunch of changes to Seven but I dont think radical brand changes.

@mgifford Unlikely, the change would mostly be - because its exciting for us.

The name Core_Admin is growing on me. I think the theme's name should match it's purpose. That's the first question I ask when I see a machine name for some kind of drupal module or theme.

The name "seven", and likewise the name "eight", both make sense as the name of theme that has been completely reworked for that major iteration of Drupal. And with it comes the implicit promise that at every major iteration of Drupal we will see a completely new administrative theme. But then I would be confused if I ever compared Drupal 8 and Drupal 7 and didn't see a major difference between the two themes. That would lower my expectations that between major version of Drupal there really won't be a lot of care put towards changing the core themes.

Just stream of consciousness critiquing there. In short, naming the theme core_admin properly sets my expectations low. My expectations would be that the core_admin is solid, and should only see minor corrections / improvements in the future.

Renamed the issue, I don't really fancy taking this to a 200# comment issue to discuss the perils of this name change. So go ahead :) whenever we settled on Eight, let me know.

K, I think this is a complete waste of time and energy, but do what you want. :)

Those are very discouraging comments. As a result, this issue is set up to be unproductive. How can we move forward?

You're right, I don't mean to come across as discouraging. It's just that we already had a huge bikeshed about the name at #534402: Administration theme name, and the existing one was chosen by the theme's designer. I don't relish going through that process again unless there's a demonstrable gain.

One demonstratable gain in naming the default administrative theme something that isn't version specific is that we won't need to have this debate again.

why it confused user ?? It isn't named Seven-Drupal-7.

Rename to Eight it will confusing D7 user:
- is it a new theme for D8?
- can i use my old Seven Sub theme?
- how can i upgrade to Eight

and it will wasting translator time to reimport stings

@droplet, I think those are all valid arguments. A good number of users won't ever deal with themes. The audience we're talking about here are themers, developers, and advanced/intermediate site admins that have put forth the effort to change or otherwise manage their site's theme.

To those users, is it really confusing to the point that they will have to seek for their answer on Drupal.org or online? Probably not. It's just a name for a theme, silly. It's just an annoyance to the refactor-ers like myself. The name for our super awesome revamped theme was branded to a specific release. Great, if you want to embed the expectation that we're going to only use that theme for that version. Not great if it's supposed to be something that slowly evolves from one major version to the next.

If that is the case, then it's name should also be something that slowly (or never) changes. @droplet seems to be arguing that we shouldn't rename the theme at all. I would be cool with that. Yet, naming the theme to be something that didn't call out it's origination date would be helpful for future inquiries about why It's named seven when the major version number of Drupal > 7.

For that reason, I recommend that we change the name of the theme to be core_admin and put this issue to bed.

Why don't we just tell people we like Star Trek Voyager and be done with it? :-)

...because that would obviously be a lie? No one liked Star Trek Voyager.

I started with drupal version 7 but never linked the name of the theme to the version of drupal, duh, it seemed just as reasonable a name as any other out there. Bartik, Garland, and Stark just seemed random names and I wasn't concerned with the history of the name of the theme, just what it did. Leave the name, save the work, and I don't think any one will be bothered if its still called seven in drupal 14.

well, we could name it Buytaert

hehe, both names start with a 'B' ;)

In real life the number/word seven has many common uses and many times referred to as a lucky, natural, magical, or perfect number(though mathematically it isn't). It often refers to a complete cycle of things(days of the week, wonders of the world, etc). In the unreal world of the internet its properties are sometimes magically magnified. I don't think you can apply the traits of luck or perfection to an administrative theme and I don't think the theme is considered as complete. That just leaves magical. As long as it continues to be developed(eg., mobile support) you might say that though born in drupal version 7 its continued existence is somewhat magical.

Unfortunately the admin menu has 9 main categories: dashboard, content, structure, appearance, people, modules, configuration, reports, and help. If you could make an argument for not counting dashboard and help you could claim a 'seven' cycle.

I do love how you managed to pull in something completely unrelated to why Seven is called Seven into this discussion, I applaud that :P

I am going to mark this postponed, its a fun change - but other than that not a priority at this point.

Perhaps now (post API freeze) would be a good point to reopen this discussion? +1 for core_admin or Buytaert (more to the point, +1 for something other than "Seven")

I disagree that keeping the name Seven would be confusing as stated in the issue summary. It's a name. The name of the admin theme. I don't see the need to reverse-engineer a new rationale for why the name is like it is.

I'm all for updating the name of the default admin theme, even just for the 'optics' of it. I get that retaining the old name would save some effort, but it would send a signal that either a) we're attached to the old way of doing things or b) we're too lazy to change it.

I've been using Drupal for about 3 years (in D6), and I *had* made the association between the theme name 'Seven' and the major version of Drupal that it came with. I personally feel like retaining the name 'seven' would seem, well, anachronistic.

Like it or not, the admin theme in D8 is going to look quite a bit different. To people who don't think in PHP, it will seem like a totally new theme (even if the guts of it are the same, which I'm not sure is the case).

I also think it's a bit of a disservice to the folks who are putting effort into updating the core admin theme to just keep the same label. They are doing a lot of new and interesting work. It's no small feat to try to make Drupal admin responsive.

I agree the name of a theme is usually inherently inconsequential, but I think the *choice to retain the old name* is not.

Will we have to have this debate every time we have a new major version of Drupal? Frankly, I hope so. That would mean:
- We are actively evolving the administration/content authoring experience (as we should)
- We are attracting design / front end development talent to the core project (these are the folks who will contribute the most the new look/feel)
- We aren't attached to old things

What would be some good ideas for names?
- "Eight" - obvious, logical
- "Buytaert" - obvious association with the project
- "Direct" - okay, I just pulled this from the Thesaurus (as a synonym for 'administer'), but it's powerful, active, and would give a site builder a sense of the power they are being given

[Editing to take out my name suggestions - let's keep this to debate of 'seven' vs. 'eight']

I don't think it's confusing, as Yoroy said it's just a name. No one needs to know why it's called Seven.

I'd rather the work done on the theme during the D8 cycle was presented as an evolution rather than a complete replacement. If it ain't broken don't fix it.

I'm for "Eight". The theme was named for the version and it will be confusing to users if we don't maintain that logic. I don't think it will be a problem when we come to 9 etc. to keep this going and, if anything, it gives us an incentive to keep refreshing it with each version.

Just to clarify: I don't think the name/continued usage of the name "seven" is or would be *confusing*. I just think it *looks bad*.

I also don't want a monster issue thread on this, either. I kind of agree with #9 - let's just call it "Eight" and be done with it.

I think a lot of the original reservation on this was that the admin theme would not evolve much from 7 to 8. At least in terms of look/feel, and the fact that it will be twig-based, means that it has in fact been a pretty massive update.

In my mind the remaining points of debate are whether to:

- Just keep "Seven"
- Update it to be "Eight"

Let's not open this up to a theme naming free-for-all. That helps no one.

I doubt Seven needs a new name to avoid confusion. However, for entirely aesthetic readons I’ve never liked the idea of naming the theme after the core version in which it was introduced. I’ve had an idea for a replacement name for a while, and now I can’t *not* share it. So: *if* and *only if* we decided to change it, here’s what I’d call it: “Ada”. After Ada Lovelace, of course, which parallels Bartik. I for one think it would be a great tradition to name core themes in honor of women computer scientists. It’s also a nice mnemonic for “admin”.

You are welcome Bojhan :D

Seriously though I think it would be cool if we renamed it to Eight just for romantic reasons...

Honestly, at this point this would be an API break, post API freeze, for no compelling reason other than "ew." Maybe in D9 we will have a wildly redesigned admin theme and they can choose a name for it that doesn't imply Drupal versions. Until then, I think this is "won't fix," personally.

But, but, but.. pretty new name.

This is an honest question (from a front end guy): What about renaming the default admin theme is an API break? Other than renaming the directory, updating the .info file, and maybe tweaking the install files to point to the new theme - are there further ramifications of this? From what I can tell, the actual changes to code would be a few minutes of work.

Also, in #24 this was deliberately postponed until after API Freeze. So, when was this debate supposed to happen?

The debate is mostly a philosophical one, to be sure. But, I think the optics of this decision are important - I'd rather not be "ew" if we can help it.

Mostly it would be a break for sub-themes of Seven, which, admittedly, would probably be rare. I don't think #24 postponed this on anything in particular, and definitely see no mention of API freeze there.

As another practical note, doing this would require updating tags, discussions, documentation, etc. which refer to "Seven style guide," re-training people to search for "Eight style guide" instead, and other bits of friction to the core development process and burden on the documentation team. The end of the world? No. Does "ew" outweigh this? Don't think so.

+1 for “won't fix”, for all the reasons cited by @yoroy, @webchick and @LewisNyman. Right up until D8 ships, there will be plenty of work with more UX and DX bang-for-buck than this.

Since the first Drupal 8 beta came out, the name of the Seven theme won't get a rename in Drupal 8. Making as a won't fix, also because of the arguments given by a number of people.