ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

Xyne · 2009-05-23 20:15:45

http://xyne.archlinux.ca/info/obtheme

The name says it all. It's an addition to the set of obconf, obmenu and obkey. It should be mostly self-explanatory right now but check the preliminary help message for some things that might not be obvious. It's in my repo and in the AUR. It's completely standalone right now so you can just download the file and test it if you don't want to install it (get it from the my site).

Related: http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/Help:Themes

As always, questions and feedback are welcome. Enjoy.

*edit*
dependencies: python, pygtk, gtk2 and python-fuse

Last edited by Xyne (2009-05-29 10:29:14)

Ashren · 2009-05-23 20:34:45

Wow. Cool stuff.

Slick interface. Certainly looks more straigtforward and intuitive than editing themerc by hand.

/me contemplates trying out OB again for the first time in a year.

Last edited by Ashren (2009-05-23 20:35:52)

SamC · 2009-05-23 20:44:53

Is this a continuation of the obtheme floating around here? Regardless, it looks pretty nice.

DonVla · 2009-05-23 21:13:03

very nice!
works fine here.

genisis300 · 2009-05-23 21:16:54

Brilliant Good work Xyne

Rasi · 2009-05-23 21:32:26

Does this mean, we will see new themes on box-look.org soon?

PJ · 2009-05-23 21:40:59

A bit buggy so far but I think it is pretty cool application.

At first I couldn't start obtheme since I didn't have a .themes directory in my home directory. Another thing was that my own theme didn't render to well after I run it through obtheme. My own theme is still a work in progress but if you want to see the difference between my theme and the one rendered with obtheme I have uploaded my theme here.

<edit>
A screenshot of the difference.

</edit>

Last edited by PJ (2009-05-23 21:49:42)

skottish · 2009-05-23 22:56:29

That's pretty slick Xyne. Nice work.

Xyne · 2009-05-24 03:42:43

SamC wrote:

Is this a continuation of the obtheme floating around here? Regardless, it looks pretty nice.

Nope, this is completely from scratch. I didn't really look for an existing gui editor beyond a few searches. With the number of openbox aficionados here, I'm sure that any openbox theme editor worth its code on paper would have shown up in the forum. I hope this one will be.

PJ wrote:

A bit buggy so far but I think it is pretty cool application.

I know, that's why I'm calling it an early beta. The code is only 3 days old and is a work in progress.

PJ wrote:

At first I couldn't start obtheme since I didn't have a .themes directory in my home directory. Another thing was that my own theme didn't render to well after I run it through obtheme. My own theme is still a work in progress but if you want to see the difference between my theme and the one rendered with obtheme I have uploaded my theme here.
<edit>
A screenshot of the difference.
http://omploader.org/tMXB5dg
</edit>

I'll fix the ".themes" dir error now. I don't know how obtheme generates those previews but if I can figure out how to create them then I will. The current "preview" command just loads the preview once. I'll update that to a "preview mode" so that all changes are immediately loaded but you'll still have to check the live theme to see the results for now.

@all
The interface is likely to change a bit and I'll be adding more features and refining the code base as I go along. Thanks for the feedback so far. Keep posting feature requests and bug reports.

NeoXP · 2009-05-24 08:09:36

Interesting project, I will look into it.

zandaa · 2009-05-24 09:08:48

it's looking good so far, I'm also noticing the same thing that PJ showed us, the thing with the button images being rendered as black squares on an active window etc. Keep up the good work, this'll certainly aid in customizing my ob setup even more

PJ · 2009-05-24 10:10:51

Xyne wrote:

I don't know how obtheme generates those previews but if I can figure out how to create them then I will.

Do you mean the previews that obconf generates? Since I couldn't find a similar functionality in obtheme. To make it a bit more clear I was actually looking at the live theme earlier, not a preview.

Last edited by PJ (2009-05-24 10:11:38)

Chokkan · 2009-05-24 10:57:42

Great work. Thanks for this. Once I've got myself settled in with my new machine, I'll be sure to give this a try.

Xyne · 2009-05-25 07:36:05

Updates:
fixed error due to missing ~/.themes directory
fixed broken file loader and save in the xbm editor
added width & height buttons to the xbm editor
changed "preview" to live preview mode
added a fuse file system to avoid writing the preview file to the disk with each change (yeah, I like to avoid writing to the disk as you've noticed)*

The code is still a mess though, at least stylistically.

*edit*
@PJ et al.
I've found and fixed the problem. The parser was ignoring theme element names with an asterisk in them ("*"). I wasn't aware that you could glob them when I wrote it.

Thanks for posting your themerc file. It really helped.

Last edited by Xyne (2009-05-25 09:33:25)

DonVla · 2009-05-25 10:43:13

hey xyne,

what is python-fuse used for?
i see no connection between obtheme and mounting smth?
and i get this warning:

$ obtheme 
fuse: mountpoint is not empty
fuse: if you are sure this is safe, use the 'nonempty' mount option
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/obtheme", line 2837, in <module>
    fs.main([sys.argv[0],fusedir])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/fuse.py", line 755, in main
    main(**d)
fuse.FuseError: filesystem initialization failed

and the preview mode does not work.
when i hit ctrl-p or choose preview mode from the theme menu the theme does not change.

keep on the great work!
it's really nice to see tools developing around openbox.

vlad

Xyne · 2009-05-25 17:04:21

@DonVla

To show a live preview the theme needs to be saved with each change which entails nearly constant overwriting of the preview themerc file. I looked at various ways to avoid the unnecessary IO. As openbox does not support having the theme piped to it and it's unabled to read a theme from a fifo, I decided the best way to fake a file on the disk was to include a simple fuse system.

At the moment it just mounts ~/.themes/obtheme/openbox-3 and presents a themerc file, which is used for the preview. I intend to add support for image buttons later.

I'll fix the 'mountpoint is not empty' error now which will also fix the preview mode. Just delete the contents of ~/.themes/openbox-3 for now.

Last edited by Xyne (2009-05-29 11:08:24)

anubis2591 · 2009-05-25 18:55:57

This looks great. I really love the pallet and having an xbm editor built in. I'll definitely use this when I make my next theme.

As for the preview, I don't know if you codded it yet but it does nothing when I click on Theme>Preview Mode. What I'd really like is a obconf style preview under the pallet that updates with your changes. I'm not sure where that fits into your plans though.

Otherwise I'm really looking forward to this as it develops. I'll try to give some feedback when I try it out for real.

Xyne · 2009-05-25 19:16:20

anubis2591 wrote:

As for the preview, I don't know if you codded it yet but it does nothing when I click on Theme>Preview Mode. What I'd really like is a obconf style preview under the pallet that updates with your changes. I'm not sure where that fits into your plans though.

Run it in a terminal and check if it's spitting out any error messages about a non-empty mount point when it first starts. If so, update to the latest version and preview mode should work again.

Ideally I would have a preview like obconf but clickable so that user could quickly choose theme elements to configure. The problem is that I don't know how to do that. I'll look at the obconf source code and see if I can make some sense of it, but I think it's written in C which I don't know myself. Maybe it would be trivial to pull out the preview-generator though, or maybe someone who knows C will do it.

For now the live preview mode is the best solution that I've found.

DonVla · 2009-05-25 20:05:52

Xyne wrote:

For now the live preview mode is the best solution that I've found.

i like the live preview. i would keep this. one can directly see the changes.

anubis2591 · 2009-05-27 21:59:43

Xyne wrote:

Run it in a terminal and check if it's spitting out any error messages about a non-empty mount point when it first starts. If so, update to the latest version and preview mode should work again.

It was just an error with a missing ~/.themes/obtheme/openbox-3 folder, not just .themes. After making the directories it worked just fine. And yes this is present in the latest version.

Xyne wrote:

Ideally I would have a preview like obconf but clickable so that user could quickly choose theme elements to configure.

Yeah that would be quite awesome. I think I'd still use the element list mainly and just use a clickable preview as a shortcut. But it's not really a necessary feature, just something cool. I'd just be happy with a obconf style preview that updates after each element change.

Xyne · 2009-05-28 14:59:33

The error due to the missing ~/.themes/obtheme/openbox-3 directory should be fixed now (>=0.4.2).

dunc · 2009-05-28 22:55:13

I've been slacking a bit when it comes to the Arch forums lately (damn you, XBox 360! ), but I had to log on to say what a brilliant idea this is. Good work, Xyne.

Xyne · 2009-05-29 05:41:13

I've revisited the xbm editor, killed some bugs and added a combobox to quickly select image buttons. The image buttons are update in preview mode so you can see the effects of editing buttons immediately.

Thanks for the positive feedback so far. Feel free to spread the word on box-look and anywhere else where people might find this useful.

DonVla · 2009-05-29 08:50:20

send a mail to dana jansens or ob-ml: http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/Op … ity_portal

mehall · 2009-06-06 23:44:27

Hi there, would love to try it out, but I don't know what packages to install.

The issue is that I'm using Openbox with Ubuntu (my Arch box is headless )

So, yeah, if I can get it working, i'll be posting it on the Crunchbang Linux Forums, as they'll love it. [=

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-23 20:15:45

ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#2 2009-05-23 20:34:45

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#3 2009-05-23 20:44:53

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#4 2009-05-23 21:13:03

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#5 2009-05-23 21:16:54

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#6 2009-05-23 21:32:26

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#7 2009-05-23 21:40:59

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#8 2009-05-23 22:56:29

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#9 2009-05-24 03:42:43

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#10 2009-05-24 08:09:36

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#11 2009-05-24 09:08:48

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#12 2009-05-24 10:10:51

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#13 2009-05-24 10:57:42

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#14 2009-05-25 07:36:05

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#15 2009-05-25 10:43:13

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#16 2009-05-25 17:04:21

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#17 2009-05-25 18:55:57

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#18 2009-05-25 19:16:20

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#19 2009-05-25 20:05:52

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#20 2009-05-27 21:59:43

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#21 2009-05-28 14:59:33

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#22 2009-05-28 22:55:13

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#23 2009-05-29 05:41:13

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#24 2009-05-29 08:50:20

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

#25 2009-06-06 23:44:27

Re: ObTheme: a GUI theme editor for Openbox

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