(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Is there a little tutorial somewhere on the basics of installing and modifying GTK+ 2.0 themes, complete with beginner's explanations of "theme engines" and things like that? (These themes don't look quite as easy to understand and use as, say, IceWM themes!) If so, thanks in advance for letting me know!

David McClamrock

pa_mcclamrock wrote:Is there a little tutorial somewhere on the basics of installing and modifying GTK+ 2.0 themes, complete with beginner's explanations of "theme engines" and things like that? (These themes don't look quite as easy to understand and use as, say, IceWM themes!) If so, thanks in advance for letting me know!

David McClamrock

What I know about it is that I have a diploma in Web, so that gives me some insight in xml, but with the gtk2 themes I learn more just by backing up the file first, and playing with it and seeing what does what, every time I changed something I reloaded the theme and noticed what changed.
well with colours it goes like this in icewm which is the same with gtk2 themes you can specify colours different ways.
sure the example above aren't the same place or colour, but its showing you 3 ways of typing out colours.


colour
ColorClockText="#0078ff"
ColorClockText=White
ColorNormalBorder="rgb:27/28/2f"

or this theme I added, The fonts were really small and I couldn't read them

style "theme-default"
{
GtkButton ::default_border = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }
GtkRange ::trough_border = 0
GtkPaned ::handle_size = 6

So I added this line, Which I got from puppy default gtk2 silver theme,

font_name="DejaVu Sans 12"

and I place it in this location

style "theme-default"
{
font_name="DejaVu Sans 12" <-------------right here
GtkButton ::default_border = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }
GtkRange ::trough_border = 0
GtkPaned ::handle_size = 6
now the whole documents has that size of font
ttuuxxx

also theme engines like clearlooks or murrine are basically drivers that run a certain type of gtk2 theme, and sometimes supports window managers with the themes, murrine can be stricktly gtk2 or it can be gtk2 plus metacity, which doesn't work with puppy, but murrine is a good place to start playing around with
here's a link to it, its 38kb includes the theme engine and 14 themes, located in /usr/share/themes
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=14926

ttuuxxx

ttuuxxx wrote:[ . . . ] theme engines like clearlooks or murrine are basically drivers that run a certain type of gtk2 theme [ . . . ] murrine is a good place to start playing around with [ . . . ]

I'm especially interested in Clearlooks because (1) it's going to be in Puppy 4.2 and (2) it looks a whole lot like the best of the Tk 8.5 themes, so my Tcl/Tk apps (with an appropriate color scheme) would fit right in, even if I didn't rewrite them to use Gnocl instead of Tk. Is there a .PET with the Clearlooks theme engine and lots of themes?

pa_mcclamrock wrote:

ttuuxxx wrote:[ . . . ] theme engines like clearlooks or murrine are basically drivers that run a certain type of gtk2 theme [ . . . ] murrine is a good place to start playing around with [ . . . ]

I'm especially interested in Clearlooks because (1) it's going to be in Puppy 4.2 and (2) it looks a whole lot like the best of the Tk 8.5 themes, so my Tcl/Tk apps (with an appropriate color scheme) would fit right in, even if I didn't rewrite them to use Gnocl instead of Tk. Is there a .PET with the Clearlooks theme engine and lots of themes?

Ya sure the location is http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34128
and use the smaller package, its more stable, its the one in the next puppy and has 6 themes.
I have a feeling the murrine engine might also be in the next puppy as well, due to size and how nice the themes are, they are identical to clearlooks quality.
ttuuxxx

OK, I think I'm starting to catch on a bit! Here are a few screenshots of Pmusic with different Clearlooks themes I'm working on.

Clearlooks-Winterblue:



Clearlooks-Autumnalia:



Clearlooks-RoyalPurple2 (I think there's already a Clearlooks-RoyalPurple theme):



I'm typing this message in SeaMonkey with the Clearlooks-Winterblue theme; I don't think I'll be using the same old silver-gray themes too much any more!

I just have one question for anyone who may be able to answer it: What's "PRELIGHT"? I see that there are four big categories of colors--to oversimplify a bit: "bg" (window background), "fg" (window text), "base" (text and list background), and "text" (text in text and list boxes). Each one has five specifications: NORMAL, PRELIGHT, SELECTED, ACTIVE, and INSENSITIVE. I can see what all of them mean except PRELIGHT. Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer this!

pa_mcclamrock wrote:OK, I think I'm starting to catch on a bit! Here are a few screenshots of Pmusic with different Clearlooks themes I'm working on.

Clearlooks-Winterblue:



Clearlooks-Autumnalia:



Clearlooks-RoyalPurple2 (I think there's already a Clearlooks-RoyalPurple theme):



I'm typing this message in SeaMonkey with the Clearlooks-Winterblue theme; I don't think I'll be using the same old silver-gray themes too much any more!

I just have one question for anyone who may be able to answer it: What's "PRELIGHT"? I see that there are four big categories of colors--to oversimplify a bit: "bg" (window background), "fg" (window text), "base" (text and list background), and "text" (text in text and list boxes). Each one has five specifications: NORMAL, PRELIGHT, SELECTED, ACTIVE, and INSENSITIVE. I can see what all of them mean except PRELIGHT. Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer this!

Those look pretty good:) I'm more for the traditional silver or a few of those murrine themes were nice, I'm glad WhoDo is going to put them in the next release of 4.2.
PRELIGHT If I remember correctly happens when you hover your mouse of a icon and the background changes, a prime example would be Pmount and the file cabinet.
hope that helps
ttuuxxx

Here are screenshots of three more Clearlooks themes, plus a "Clearlooks-Colorschemes" .PET containing all six of mine (requires, obviously, GTK+ 2.0 or greater, plus the Clearlooks theme engine).

(EDIT 2009 Feb 22: These screenshots and the ones above are of what I hope are the final, tweaked versions of the themes, and I've substituted them for the originals. The .PET attached to this message now has these, not the un-tweaked originals. If anyone thinks they need still more tweaking, just let me know.)

Clearlooks-Aquaviva:



Clearlooks-Greenery:



Clearlooks-MamaRose (my wife's favorite):



These themes are just plain text files, about 4 KB or so each uncompressed. If you want to tweak them or create your own using them as templates, here are some basic things you need to know (if you don't already):

All color codes in these themes are in "#RRGGBB" format, two hexadecimal digits for red, two for blue, two for green, always enclosed by "# on the left and " on the right.

"fg" means window foreground; "bg" is window background; "base" is, e.g., textbox and listbox background; "text" is, e.g., textbox and listbox text.

The meanings of "NORMAL," "SELECTED," and "INSENSITIVE" should be obvious. "PRELIGHT" is, e.g., the color you see when you mouse over a menu item (as I now know). "ACTIVE" is kind of like "SELECTED," only for when the window doesn't have focus (so far as I can figure out).

In addition to the 20 color selections near the top, there are also scattered ones farther down: "clearlooks-button" for buttons, "clearlooks-notebook" for tabs, "clearlooks-menu" for menu background, "clearlooks-menu-item" for menu text color during mouse-over, plus "clearlooks-frame-title," "clearlooks-tooltips," and "clearlooks-progressbar" (should be obvious, I hope).

Finally, be warned: if you make even one little mistake--like leaving out a quotation mark, a pound sign, a color code, or any other little thing--GTK+ 2.0 (or greater) will punish you severely. How? It will make your beautiful theme look exactly like the ugly "Default" theme, that's how! Not only that, but (unlike Tk or Gnocl) it won't give you any friendly, helpful error messages telling you where to look for the problem. Is it worth it? Well . . . you be the judge.

pa_mcclamrock wrote: Finally, be warned: if you make even one little mistake--like leaving out a quotation mark, a pound sign, a color code, or any other little thing--GTK+ 2.0 (or greater) will punish you severely. How? It will make your beautiful theme look exactly like the ugly "Default" theme, that's how! Not only that, but (unlike Tk or Gnocl) it won't give you any friendly, helpful error messages telling you where to look for the problem. Is it worth it? Well . . . you be the judge.

I know that problem oh so well, Its happened to me many of times
and when it does, I'm glad theres a 'undo' button, After Every change I make, I save it and test it, and if it didn't work, I click undo. That way it saves you a lot of time trying to find out where you went wrong.
Simple yet effective
ttuuxxx

Hey, crew…I realized that I had done both of these, that I liked ‘em so much I use ‘em regularly on my desktop, but that I hadn’t shared ‘em.

They are straight up mutations, putting green where there was blue.

The jwm theme is a mutation of WhoDo’s Vista theme, and I’ve labeled it (get this): Vista-green.

And the gtk theme is a mutation of one of the Clearlook gtk themes with 4.2 (Clearlooks DeepSky).

I’ll post the jwm theme on the jwm themes thread and the gtk theme on the gtk themes thread…so, forgive the double post (sort of) but each thread is a different deal…

Enjoy!

GTK themes added here:
http://puppylin.freehostia.com/gtk.htm

dejan555 wrote:GTK themes added here:
http://puppylin.freehostia.com/gtk.htm

Yeah! Go, dejan, go!

Hi theme lovers,

Trouble mix and matching between gtk and jwm theme because you have to openm 2 apps? Well, look no more, click on my signature, desktop manager, you'll like it. Inpits are welcome. Thx

Hey ppl, since I couldn't get some themes to work on dpup I took some buttons from Slickness Black theme and made a small puppy-compatible GTK theme, download from attachment. If you want to make filenames in ROX readable go to rox options -> Colours tab -< uncheck color files based on filetype or adjust colors as you wish. If someone wants to make some modifications feel free to post modified package.

Hi Dejan!

Thanks for this truly awesome "Basic-Black" gtk theme! It really rocks! I've used this in both my Dpup/Upup and I just love the way this looks as opposed to the much "heavier look" of the Slickness Black themes. Not only that but I've found that this theme is far more lite-weight when compared to those of the Slickness Black family ( due to the fact that it's not calling up all those heavy-weight .png files to make the GUI, etc. ).

A real winner IMHO Dejan. Ought to be posted at Gnome-Look.org for the entire world to enjoy!

Thanks so much for this once again - and while I'm at it? - thanks likewise for that fabulous website of yours! I can end up getting lost there for hours!

Amicalement/Cheers!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge d'Acadie"

Thanks you very much Eyes-Only, glad you like it.
Sure it's lightweight and compatible with puppy, it's just one gtkrc conf file and four small graphics for buttons (two of them are only taken from slickness black and scaled to 20x20 to match trio's gtk theme maker template.

Eyes-Only wrote:Ought to be posted at Gnome-Look.org for the entire world to enjoy!

So I did
http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show. ... ent=121416

We'll see how this works for gnome users

Hey! Way to go Dejan and Congrats!! That's pretty awesome to see that you posted it on the 11th - today's the 12th - and already there have been 40 downloads with a 54% approval rating!

Far out my fellow Puppian friend!! This is really great, plus I was really happy to see where you'd given "Our Favourite Distro" a little plug in your description/story when describing the theme.

That's a truly great place to go when wanting to change the GTK2 looks of one's desktop. I only wished I had more time to hang out there...

Good luck to you Dejan! Bonne Chance Mon Aminche!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Eyes-Only wrote:I was really happy to see where you'd given "Our Favourite Distro" a little plug in your description/story when describing the theme.

That was part of the plan

I think rating starts from 50% when you upload, not sure by how it increase but yes, looks good for only one day up