Unlike Bookface (which is a scheme for Frio) this Booklook is not a Vier "style" it is a stand-alone theme. I started by copying Vier but have heavily modified it and integrated a lot of features and code from Frio, but without any of the libraries or frameworks. So Booklook is also not a Bootstrap theme.

It's little wonder nobody is making themes for Friendica. It's kind of a nightmare due to outdated or non-existent documentation and Friendica has a thousand "moving parts" so every time I turn around there's another thing that needs to be addressed, which often means picking through the core code trying to figure out how it works, and then that core code is in flux with the refactor too. And because there are so many addons and configurations people might have it's impossible to anticipate all of them.

To say it is frustrating would be an understatement.

I would like to finish it and release it but I'm not all that interested in maintaining it because my enthusiasm for this platform is waning.

And also "stay local" became default not that long ago, so I wonder if the Home link would be that missed, and a new dedicated link should take its place? What do you think?

Haven't added text to Contacts, Messages and Notifications yet, but I could?
Messages and Notifications are identical on e.g. FB so I kinda thought perhaps labels weren't as needed there. But Contacts is unique.
Those three were just moved to the right in Frio, matching FB and somewhat Bookface.

In the PR that replaces Home, which has not been merged, it's also done for Vier, yes, though fairly often I only modify Frio partially because it's less work.
But that hasn't been approved or merged yet.

The next release is planned for august so it'll be a while.

You had mentioned something about adding labels so they get translated and Bookface wouldn't need to use CSS variables for the labels anymore. It would just be the variable for displaying the labels or not.

I saw that you were also working on a change to where "Home" goes, I assume that is in the Friendica core and would apply to all themes not just Frio?

I was considering adding a dedicated button to return to one's instance instead if it's possible to detect. Maybe the Conversations button could get the icon it has in the user menu and then it's only shown to remotely authenticated users?