Home » U++ Library support » Look and Chameleon Technology » Creating a theme
| Creating a theme [message #5870] |
Sat, 21 October 2006 16:36  |
guido
Messages: 169
Registered: April 2006
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Experienced Member |
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Hi,
I'm thinking of creating a Clearlooks theme. But I feel, with current documentation and the less-than self-explanatory source, I'm left at a lot of guess-work at the moment.
Should I wait?
Or can you hint me to sources of information, I might have missed.
Guido
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5873 is a reply to message #5872] |
Sat, 21 October 2006 19:02  |
guido
Messages: 169
Registered: April 2006
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Experienced Member |
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| luzr wrote on Sat, 21 October 2006 17:30 |
Actually, I am working on "Human" right now, with "Clearlooks" being the next stop.
There is no chameleon docs because the whole interface is still in development...
Anyway, I think once "Human" is finished, it will serve as an example well to provide other themes.
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Good to hear 
Another aspect of theming are the icons.
Any plans to create sets for Gnome and KDE?
I thought for a while about automating the task by writing a script, that converts icons from /usr/share/icons for upp purposes.
I'm not sure though, if that is so trivial as it sounds.
Probably I need to write a little upp utility, that does the image conversion itself, or could imagemagick do that?
Guido
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5875 is a reply to message #5873] |
Sun, 22 October 2006 02:13 |
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mirek
Messages: 14162
Registered: November 2005
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Ultimate Member |
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| guido wrote on Sat, 21 October 2006 13:02 |
| luzr wrote on Sat, 21 October 2006 17:30 |
Actually, I am working on "Human" right now, with "Clearlooks" being the next stop.
There is no chameleon docs because the whole interface is still in development...
Anyway, I think once "Human" is finished, it will serve as an example well to provide other themes.
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Good to hear
Another aspect of theming are the icons.
Any plans to create sets for Gnome and KDE?
I thought for a while about automating the task by writing a script, that converts icons from /usr/share/icons for upp purposes.
I'm not sure though, if that is so trivial as it sounds.
Probably I need to write a little upp utility, that does the image conversion itself, or could imagemagick do that?
Guido
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Actually, I was planning to just load them  I am not just quite sure how to find the proper path correctly. Anyway, for start, I think even fixed paths would do.... (Well, in fact, at the moment we are speaking just about 3 icons for Prompt message boxes..)
To tell the truth, I think that for next releases we really should attempt to use GTK theming API... (GTK is LGPL, dynamic linking to it would be OK).
Mirek
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5879 is a reply to message #5877] |
Sun, 22 October 2006 13:48 |
guido
Messages: 169
Registered: April 2006
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Experienced Member |
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| luzr wrote on Sun, 22 October 2006 03:44 |
Well, now that I have the experience of the half way of re-creating the Human theme, I think it is time to investigate GTK+ theming API (because the process proved to be simple but slow...)
What do you think, is it acceptable to link gtk .so directly (simpler) or should we rather aim for runtime linking?
(In either way, gtk development libraries will be necessary for U++ development...)
Mirek
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Phew Mirek, that's a sudden turn of events.
It is certainly acceptable either way. I mean everyone outside the Qt-verse is doing it now.
But the increased startup-time and runtime overhead, would lose some of the special appeal of upp for me.
Me, I'd prefer to try the tedious route first. Theme authors are usually not in short supply. So the burden might not be on you as much as you fear.
But in ignorance of the process and possible limitations of hand-made themes, how can I really judge at this time?
Going the gtk-route, going the cairo-graphics route throughout follows, IMHO.
Guido
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5880 is a reply to message #5879] |
Sun, 22 October 2006 13:56 |
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mirek
Messages: 14162
Registered: November 2005
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Ultimate Member |
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| guido wrote on Sun, 22 October 2006 07:48 |
| luzr wrote on Sun, 22 October 2006 03:44 |
Well, now that I have the experience of the half way of re-creating the Human theme, I think it is time to investigate GTK+ theming API (because the process proved to be simple but slow...)
What do you think, is it acceptable to link gtk .so directly (simpler) or should we rather aim for runtime linking?
(In either way, gtk development libraries will be necessary for U++ development...)
Mirek
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Phew Mirek, that's a sudden turn of events.
It is certainly acceptable either way. I mean everyone outside the Qt-verse is doing it now.
But the increased startup-time and runtime overhead, would lose some of the special appeal of upp for me.
Me, I'd prefer to try the tedious route first. Theme authors are usually not in short supply. So the burden might not be on you as much as you fear.
But in ignorance of the process and possible limitations of hand-made themes, how can I really judge at this time?
Going the gtk-route, going the cairo-graphics route throughout follows, IMHO.
Guido
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Well, I have just strong feeling that we would end there anyway - until we use gtk+ themes directly (just like XP themes), we are not able to provide fully integrated look... which is what users demand.
I hope that linking to gtk.so alone will not affect U++ startup times too much. I will try first I can also make the linking process fully dynamic using .dli (no gtk -> no theming, but apps still working).
Mirek
P.S.: Qt does it too 
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5885 is a reply to message #5880] |
Mon, 23 October 2006 08:55 |
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From the other side qt has bulit-in clear look theme - gtk is not used to paint it. Besides I feel gtk is not painting speed daemon.. of course try to use qt or gtk to paint their themes - maybe results will be very good. Personaly I think that is better to emulate default themes for both desktop though.
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| Re: Creating a theme [message #5897 is a reply to message #5894] |
Mon, 23 October 2006 21:19 |
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| luzr wrote on Mon, 23 October 2006 11:20 |
Maybe we will end with that. But I must say that I am quite happy with Chameleon in XP (just think about Vista and all troubles with creating new themes for it), so I think at least experiment is required here...
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I'm happy with chamelon in xp too! But winapi is lightweight and it is the only one for the whole system. In linux there are many gui libs, each with its own theme system.
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Frankly, after spending two days with Human, I would not want to repeat my ImageDes story - I spend 2 weeks fixing old ImageDes to work with new Image and 2 month later another 2 weeks with new ImageDes (rewritten from the scratch). I am afraid that story would repeate here, spending 2 weeks to recreate ClearLooks and Human and then another 2 weeks to get it working with GTK theming ...
Mirek
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What human is?? (macos theme??)
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