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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

I'm using Arch Linux. Since whisker menu was updated to v2.1.6 from v1.7.5, I cannot resize it using the mouse, and the font has become smaller (and probably bold) too.

Screenshots:
v1.7.5

v2.2.1

Is there a way to fix the resizing bug, and specify the font size/type in some config?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Whiskermenu v2x is based on GTK3. What Gtk (Apperance) theme are you using?

Try changing to something like Adwaita or Greybird to see if there is a change.

As for the resizing, does grabbing and dragging the top right corner grip not resize it?

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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Thanks for your reply, changing the theme to Adwaita did change the font size. I'm currently using a slightly-self-modded version of Fantome, which is a mod of Arc-Dark. The same font size persists in Arc-Dark.

Since the font size changes with the theme, which theme files would I need to edit for making the required change to the font size in Whisker Menu?

Also, grabbing and dragging the top right corner grip was what I was trying to do to get Whisker Menu to resize, and it does not work. Which other method exists?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Since the font size changes with the theme, which theme files would I need to edit for making the required change to the font size in Whisker Menu?

Some basic info about themeing the whiskermenu can be found here. Specific to fonts, you could use something like:

#whiskermenu-window {
	font-size: 12;
}

Valid properties that you could affect include:
- font-family
- font-size
- font-stretch
- font-style
- font-variant
- font-weight
More info about the properties can be found here.

Also, grabbing and dragging the top right corner grip was what I was trying to do to get Whisker Menu to resize, and it does not work. Which other method exists?

That is odd that it doesn't work. There is a ~/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-XX.rc file that saves the menu dimensions. You could quit the panel ("xfce4-panel -q"), change the values there and restart the panel.

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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Thanks! The config file edit worked perfectly. I'm still not able to resize using the mouse/trackpad, but at least I can resize it now.

By modifying the CSS font options in the gtk.css file of my custom theme, I could successfully change the font to my liking. I just have one small request now; could you tell me the CSS option to change the text/button height? This is because the button height is larger in Adwaita, while it is smaller in my theme. Screenshots:

My theme:

Adwaita:

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

I must be blind - they look the same to me. Can you point out where exactly?

Note: You can increase overall padding via:

#whiskermenu-window* {
	padding: 1px;
}

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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Well, the padding option did help. Not exactly what I was thinking of, but really good nonetheless.

The difference is in the button heights. This difference is really small, but it adds up when you compare the distance betwen the "System" option and the search bar. This difference in my theme is around 75px, while it is around 50px for Adwaita.

With the padding option set, the button height remains the same, while a padding around the window's edges pushes the button down, so that the height mentioned earlier reduces.

Also, I just seemed to notice there is a clip in the window's shadow. It's mostly due to plank dock, but it didn't occur for v1.7.5. Is is probably the decorator's fault with having bugs with GTK3? I'm using metacity on Compiz.

Last edited by rharish (2018-08-24 14:18:41)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

It looks like you might be able to target just the sidebar with something like:

#whiskermenu-window>frame>stack>box>stack>box>scrolledwindow>viewport* {
	padding: 1px;
}

...but the plugin doesn't seem to directly expose that area for this kind of themeing.

As for the clip, try un-checking Settings Manager > Window Manager Tweaks > Compositor > Show shadows under dock windows.

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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

YAY!! The gtk config worked perfectly. By the way, where are you getting all of this info on the plugin? Is it there in the source in some file?

Also, I'm using compiz and not xfwm4. By default, it tries applying shadows to all windows. So I tried two things:
1. I switched off shadows for all dock windows. There was no result, as I think it's been a bug in compiz since a lot of months (years?) that shadows don't appear for docks and panels.
2. I switched off shadows only for plank. I got the same result as above.
3. I switched off shadows for Whisker Menu. This worked, in the sense that there is no shadow for whisker menu at all, which makes it uniform, but with no shadows

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,492

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

YAY!! The gtk config worked perfectly. By the way, where are you getting all of this info on the plugin? Is it there in the source in some file?

I'm using the GTK Inspector. Quit the panel (xfce4-panel -q) and restart it with the inspector active:

GTK_DEBUG=interactive xfce4-panel

...you'll probably get a bunch of windows open so you need to find the correct one. For the whiskermenu, you'll actually see the text visible on the main screen (which makes this one easy to find):

Click on the top left button (object selector) and click on the whiskermenu icon in the panel. Then click on the button next to the object selector to see the widget hierarchy:

You can then dig through it. An interesting feature is the CSS tab. You can add CSS code their and it will take effect on the widget immediately (while running in this mode) so you can make changes and adjustments on the fly.

When you are satisfied, copy that code to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and restart the panel in normal mode.

Also, I'm using compiz and not xfwm4. By default, it tries applying shadows to all windows. So I tried two things:
1. I switched off shadows for all dock windows. There was no result, as I think it's been a bug in compiz since a lot of months (years?) that shadows don't appear for docks and panels.
2. I switched off shadows only for plank. I got the same result as above.
3. I switched off shadows for Whisker Menu. This worked, in the sense that there is no shadow for whisker menu at all, which makes it uniform, but with no shadows

Sorry, but I don't have any experience with compiz to offer help.

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rharish

Member

Registered: 2017-11-19

Posts: 26

Re: Whisker Menu not resizing and showing smaller fonts

Thanks for the info ToZ! And thanks a lot for everything else!