--- Begin Message ---I'm going to publish the attached article on http://themes.freshmeat.net/ this Saturday to help people who have questions about how to use themes they download from us. I've gathered as much information as I could from the documentation I could find and from trail and error. If you have a minute to spare, I would appreciate it if you could look at the section relevant to your window manager and let me know what is wrong in it or what else needs to be said. If someone else would be better equipped to reply to this message, please forward it to him or her.Thanks for your time. Sincerely, JeffHow to Create and Use Themes
Since we started hosting themes, we've had many people email us or pop on IRC and ask what they're supposed to do with groovytheme-0.16.tar.gz. In this article, I'll offer instructions for all the window managers we cover.
How to Create Themes
I originally intended to give instructions for creating themes for each window manager, as I've done below for using themes. When I looked through the documentation for each window manager, I decided against doing it. In some cases, the theme files have a large number of configuration items, and it would be easier for you to refer to the window manager's own most recent documentation than for me to keep this article up-to-date with the changes. In others, tools for creating themes have become available, and you would hate me if you followed guidelines here to write a 300-line file, only to find out you could have just clicked a button.
If you want to get started creating themes for your favorite window manager, check the documentation in its tarball or on its Web site. If you can't find instructions, try downloading a theme you like and editing its files until you come up with your own theme. Just don't expect us to include it in our database if all you've done is change an existing theme's background from color to black-and-white. ;^)
How to Use Themes
Preliminaries
Installing a theme almost always involves unpacking a tarball somewhere. If you're not familiar with tar, the two incantations you should remember are "
tar tzvf [filename]" and "tar xzvf [filename]". The first version only tests ("t") what would happen if you actually unpacked the tarball. The second really extracts ("x") the contents.You should run a test first because theme authors aren't always careful about how they pack their files. If you see this:
$ tar tzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- root/root 368 2000-02-25 20:14:08 icondefs.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 68 1999-12-21 20:01:57 sound.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 74 1999-12-21 20:01:57 tooltips.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 962 2000-05-23 10:17:38 windowmatches.cfg, watch out; it's going to spit all those files into the current directory. If your window manager expects each theme to be in its own directory, you'll need to create a directory for it first. For example, if this were an IceWM theme, you would want to do this:
$ mkdir ~/.icewm/themes/bob/ $ mv bob-0.1.tar.gz ~/.icewm/themes/bob/ $ cd ~/.icewm/themes/bob/ $ tar xzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz(and
rm bob-0.1.tar.gzif you know you don't want it anymore).If instead you see this:
$ tar tzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- root/root 368 2000-02-25 20:14:08 bob/icondefs.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 68 1999-12-21 20:01:57 bob/sound.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 74 1999-12-21 20:01:57 bob/tooltips.cfg -rw-r--r-- root/root 962 2000-05-23 10:17:38 bob/windowmatches.cfg, you don't need to worry; the bob/ directory will be created when the tarball is unpacked. In this case, you can just do this:
$ mv bob-0.1.tar.gz ~/.icewm/themes/ $ cd ~/.icewm/themes/ $ tar xzvf bob-0.1.tar.gzWhere to unpack the tarball (or even whether you need to unpack it at all) depends on the window manager.
Instructions
Here are the specific instructions for each window manager:
Afterstep
Afterstep themes should be installed in ~/GNUstep/Library/AfterStep/themes/[themename]/. After a theme has been added, update Afterstep's theme menu by clicking on "Start --> Desktop --> Update startmenu", then select the theme from the menu with "Start --> Desktop --> Theme --> [themename]".
Blackbox
Blackbox themes (known as "styles") are problematic due to lack of standardization. Where you put your style files depends on how you configured Blackbox when you installed it or how your distribution's packager configured it. Theme authors may assume you're keeping your styles in ~/.blackbox/, ~/blackbox/, /usr/share/blackbox/, or any random place that they themselves keep their files on their own systems.
The problem with this can be seen in the first Blackbox style I downloaded. It contained this line to set the background:
rootCommand: Esetroot /home/glitch/blackbox/gits/gits.jpgThat's all well and good, except that:
- I don't have Esetroot installed.
- I don't have a /home/glitch/ directory on my system, let alone anything in it.
- The tarball unpacked gits.jpg as Background/gits.jpg, so I have no idea how it was supposed to work even on the author's own system.
Unfortunately, you're going to have to tinker a bit to get Blackbox styles to work. Luckily, there are only two files in each Blackbox style tarball, the background image and the style file. Once you've determined where your Blackbox installation expects to find style files (on Debian, ~/.blackbox/styles/ will work for personal use and /usr/share/blackbox/styles/ for system-wide use), take these three steps:
- Manually move the background to where you keep your Blackbox backgrounds.
- Manually move the style file to where you keep your Blackbox styles.
- Look at the style file.
- Make sure the
rootCommandline uses an application you actually have installed to set the background image.- Make sure it points to where the background image actually is.
- If you have font problems, make sure the
*Fontline references a font that's installed on your system.[Insert moral about standardization here.]
Enlightenment
Enlightenment themes should be installed in ~/.enlightenment/themes/[themename]/. After you've installed a new one, just restart Enlightenment and select it on the Themes menu.
Fluxbox
Fluxbox themes are almost identical to Blackbox themes, so you can use the same guidelines for both. The difference is that Fluxbox themes contain a superset of the types of information in Blackbox themes, including instructions for handling Fluxbox tabs.
Blackbox themes can be used by Fluxbox. If there isn't any format for the tab in the theme, the tab will have the same theme as the titlebar.
FVWM
There's a bit of a problem here; we don't have any FVWM themes in our database, so I don't know what I would do with them if we did. :)
If you're interested in theming FVWM, you should look into the FVWM Themes project.
GTK
GTK themes are installed with the GNOME control center. Launch it with "
gnomecc &", then navigate the menus to "Desktop --> Theme selector". Click on "Install new theme..." and point it toward the tarball. There's no need to unpack it.IceWM
IceWM themes should be installed in ~/.icewm/themes/[themename]/. After you've installed a new one, just restart IceWM and select it on the Themes menu.
KDE
The tarballs of themes for KDE 2.x and later should contain a file with a .ktheme extension (which is itself a gzipped tarball). To install the theme, open the KDE Control Center and navigate to "Look & Feel --> Theme Manager", click on "Add...", and point the dialog to the .ktheme file.
Sawfish
Sawfish themes should be installed in ~/.sawfish/themes/[themename]/. A distinguishing characteristic of Sawfish is that it can apply different themes to different windows, so there are two ways to use a theme after you've installed it. To apply it to one window, right-click the window's titlebar and select the theme from the "Frame style" menu. To apply it to all windows, select "Customize --> Appearance" from the root window menu, and select the theme in the "Default frame style" dropdown box.
Window Maker
Window Maker themes should be unpacked in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/. The don't get their own [themename] subdirectories, but instead install their files in common directories such as ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/, ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Pixmaps/, ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Themes/, etc. Keep this in mind for when you want to uninstall a theme; you may want to keep its tarball around so you can see exactly what it put where.
After a theme has been installed, you can select it on the Themes menu or type
setstyle [themefile].XFCE
XFCE themes are managed through the
xfskinprogram. After you've downloaded a theme, type "xfskin &", navigate to the "file --> add" menu item, point the file selector to the tarball, and click "install".xfskincan also be used to create and delete themes.Updates
As work on window managers progresses, these instructions will become out-of-date. If you see something here that no longer applies, please let us know, and we'll make the appropriate changes. Thanks for your help.
projects to link: Afterstep 150 Blackbox 778 Enlightenment 2338 Fluxbox 18436 FVWM 2974 FVWM Themes 2975 icewm 4295 KDE 5063 sawfish 9268 Window Maker 11540 GTK+XFce 3838 categories to link: Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Theme 930 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Afterstep :: Themes 922 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Blackbox :: Themes 920 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Enlightenment :: Themes 60 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Fluxbox :: Themes 962 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: FVWM :: Themes 929 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Gnome :: GTK Themes 923 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: IceWM :: Themes 925 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: K Desktop Environment (KDE) :: Themes 61 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Sawfish :: Themes 927 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: Window Maker :: Themes 918 Topic :: Desktop Environment :: Window Managers :: XFCE :: Themes 963
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