2025-10-29 Meeting notes

20 min

Indigo Theme / Design Tokens / Release Testing Concerns

@Sam Daitzman

• BTR discussed testing on Indigo instead of default Open edX theme for Ulmo

• Looking for some technical clarification on the interaction between Indigo, Paragon’s built-in styles, and the default Open edX theme

  • Does Indigo use design tokens for theming? (I think: no)

  • Does Indigo override, replace, or modify Paragon built-in and Open edX default theme styles?

    • Indigo is a theme applied on top of the base styles. This means that if there are any issues masked by Indigo, or issues fixed in Indigo instead of the base styles, those issues will remain in the base styles instead of being fixed

    • pip install tutor = no Indigo, pip install tutor[full] = Indigo default-installed, which is the recommended install in Tutor Docs

• 3 levels/questions

  • BTR: testing with Indigo vs. no theme?

  • Tutor[full] release: include Indigo by default or not?

  • Base / no theme: what improvements should we integrate from Indigo?

• Serious concern around testing with Indigo: won’t have a chance to make improvements to base styles where Indigo patches compensate for those issues, increases maintenance complexity

• A PR exists to add some limited design token / CSS variable use for the default Indigo theme

  • But, the theme is still primarily architected as overrides, not as design token overrides

  • Supported / best-practice approach would be: theme authored in design tokens

• Additional discussion on design implications of Indigo planned soon: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/x/CYDqOgE

  • Extensive previous discussion: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/x/HgCIGAE

  • BTR discussion: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/x/BgBAOwE

  • FC-0096 theming review (page structure has more detail under lower levels): https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AYBALgE

• Brian to make a quick PR for authoring or profile updating it to use Paragon components to better match the indigo theme

  • Peter offered to also do this for the MFE Brian doesn’t make a PR for

5 mins

Design tokens friction points

@Brian Smith

• Forum post https://discuss.openedx.org/t/friction-points-in-paragon/17442

• I created issues for the things I could reproduce that were mentioned in that post. I’ve added them to the “To Do” swimlane on the PWG project board