[SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

dcbdbis · 2011-10-11 05:58:18

Good evening Arch Community,

Now that LXDE (My DE of choice) is about to be dropped from the normal repos, I felt it time to move to a supported DE. My next choice was XFCE. I'm sorry that Arch has decided to slowly move LXDE to the AUR from the mainstream repos.

XFCE is a nice, and capable DE. But it has always been an achilles heel to me with regard to theme customizations. But tweaking theme colors is no easy task. With LXDE, I could easily "tweak" the theme setting to my preferences. The white background hurts my old eyes.

In XFCE it seems that you have to understand the nuances of the gtkrc file to tweak theme colors. I don't have the time, nor the desire to become a gtkrc file format aficionado. I've got dev work I need to do.

I am hoping that the Arch community can point me to a GUI tool that will allow me to tweak theme settings graphically, just like the other DE's such as LXDE, KDE, Gnome 2. I have personal preferences for not using KDE, and I have to bite my lip regarding Gnome3.

XFCE would work for me if I can just get through two color changes. just two. If I can tweak these, I'll be a happy camper indeed.

I've also posted to the XFCE forums, but, unfortuntely, as usual when I ask color questions, I get categorically blown off. Clearly, the lack of an easy theme tweaking tool being a weak spot for XFCE as a DE.

I've gone through all the themes......and downloaded some new ones. I just do not like the xfce.dusk theme, nor the white backgrounds of the others.

I am using Moomex as a theme, and just want to tweak two settings:

a) The default background color of an opened window
b) The bg/fg colors of the WindowButton items on the task bar. Currently the WindowButton's of opened tasks show up as white text on a very light grey background. Difficult if not impossible to read.

If someone could point me towards a tool I would be appreciative. Or if someone knows the two magic field names that I need to tweak in my gtkrc file of my current theme to change the two items outlines above, I would also be appreciative.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

Last edited by dcbdbis (2011-10-11 17:23:15)

vacant · 2011-10-11 07:29:57

A general tip to narrow down which gtkrc field(s) you need to change, find something that uses the eye dropper and click on the colour you wish to change. That will give you the hex value you want to search for in the gtkrc file.

e.g. there is an eye dropper here: right click on a panel, panel->panel preferences->appearance->colour

stqn · 2011-10-11 14:43:36

I don't know if it applies to the Moomex theme, but at least for the Atolm theme, to change the background color I simply changed the "base_color" value at the very top of the gtkrc file:

gtk-color-scheme = "base_color:#aaa\nfg_color:#ececec\ntooltip_fg_color:#ffffff\nselected_bg_color:#304665\nselected_fg_color:#FFFFFF\ntext_color:#222\nbg_color:#3c3c3c\ntooltip_bg_color:#000000\nlink_color:#486a98"

The dark theme I'm using most of the time in Xfce is called "drakfire black" (slightly modified), it's a very nice dark grey theme. When I need a darker theme I use "Dark Arte" (modified to reduce text contrast).

Last edited by stqn (2011-10-11 14:50:04)

dcbdbis · 2011-10-11 15:50:44

To stqn: Magic. That was the trick. That got the backgrounds out of the ozone for my eyes. THANK YOU!

To: vacant: I wasn't aware that there was a color picker there. Good info to have. I also downloaded GColor2 from the repos which gives me a color picker too, albeit one not associated with any part of the GUI.

There is a whole section on button definitions that I'm going to look at now between the xfce-dusk theme, and see if I can cut-n-paste just that section into my current theme (backups of course) and see if I can get the buttons squared away.

I'll report back with the fixes once done.

Too bad XFCE has to be so terse.

Thanks Again!

Dave....

dcbdbis · 2011-10-11 17:28:56

After burning 6 hours on the gtkrc file, I moved back to LXDE. I mean no disrespect to the XFCE project, nor XFCE enthusiasts. All the other major DE's have the ability to tweak theme colors easily, except XFCE. I needed to move on with my work.

As Arch drops LXDE to the AUR, I'll slowly migrate to a pure openbox platform and build the needed pieces of LXDE from source, or from the AUR, which ever is more stable.

I appreciate and thank all who responded.

XFCE is a capable DE, but it clearly has an Achilles heel that the XFCE devs are choosing to ignore.

And the fact that I can't find a maintained gtkrc GUI builder on the web tells me that the gtkrc file can become convoluted and cumbersome. Because if it was more straightforward, I would have expected someone, somewhere would have generated a GUI gtkrc generator tool.

If I am in error, and such a tool exists, I ask that you please correct me and point me to it.

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Dave

Last edited by dcbdbis (2011-10-11 17:31:31)

Murray_B · 2011-10-12 12:31:03

Err, I don't understand the problem. The colors depend on the toolkit, which is used. For me it sounds that you use mainly gtk-apps, so the colors are written in the gtkrc of the activated theme. LXDE and XFCE have both a theme-selector. But I don't know a tool where you can set the colors without changing the gtkrc or switching to another theme, neither LXDE, XFCE or plain GTK. So which tool are you using in LXDE to change those colors? The tool should also work in xfce, because it needs to change the gtkrc, which is quite difficult, because the gtkrc is really complicated...

dcbdbis · 2011-10-12 16:29:07

Forgive me for being too verbose. Within XFCE there is no mechanism to adjust theme colors. Example: Within a specific theme, there is no GUI dialog to open, and adjust the default window background of the chosen theme. You are forced to manually edit the gtkrc file. In LXDE, I have a small GUI where I can take my chosen theme, and adjust the color of a selected item, in this case, the window background. A few clicks, and it's done.

There is no such facility in XFCE.

From what I've read (unless I'm misunderstanding) is that the color changer in LXDE is specific to LXDE. It actually doesn't tweak the original gtkrc file, rather it tweaks some settings in a local file unto itself and by some mechanism unknown to me at this time, "melds" the original gtkrc file with the customizations by the user. I've looked at the original gtkrc files in "/usr/share/themes" after I've tweaked them. They are unchanged.

For now, I've reverted to an LXDE/OpenBox hybrid. I hope someone in Arch decides that LXDE is worth keeping in the repos, like e16 & e17.

I had originally tried XFCE because Arch had announced that LXDE was being reverted to the AUR and out of the official repos.

Hopefully, this clarifies things.

Thanks!

Dave

MilanKnizek · 2011-10-14 18:39:02

I have come accross this post, since I am fighting with the themes in Xfce as well. Just a little comment.

Some themes' (not those Xfce4-*, but e.g. Hope or Clearlooks) colours can be changed in the lxappearance GUI, the changes are saved to $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0 file under "gtk-color-scheme" parameter. However, Xfce4 ignores it and saves its settings to $HOME/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xsettings.xml only.

I am not skilled enough at theming, however, it seems that Xfce DE reads its XML files and sets the X.org resource property atoms (check with "xprop -root | grep RESOURCE_MANAGER"), which are then used by GTK+ (2.x only?) apps.

Further, lxappearance can read the X.org atoms, but (of course) saves the configuration updates to (now obsolete?) gtkrc files only.

Anyway, this does not help with the original question, just might shed some more light on the matter.

dcbdbis · 2011-10-14 18:51:13

Thank you for the response. I knew from other forum lurkings I've done that there was much more going on underneath the hood than simple gtkrc stuff.... Because things were not adding up at all.

Thank you for the additional info.

Best Wishes,

Dave

Arch Linux

#1 2011-10-11 05:58:18

[SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#2 2011-10-11 07:29:57

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#3 2011-10-11 14:43:36

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#4 2011-10-11 15:50:44

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#5 2011-10-11 17:28:56

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#6 2011-10-12 12:31:03

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#7 2011-10-12 16:29:07

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#8 2011-10-14 18:39:02

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

#9 2011-10-14 18:51:13

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

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