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I don't know what version of XFCE4 I am running because the two methods used to determine this as returned by my search results don't work: xfce4-about isn't installed, and "Applications"->"Documentation" doesn't contain an "About XFCE" menu item. Having said that, if I use the --version flag for specific XFCE4 components, I see the following version numbers:
xfce4-panel --version : 4.12.1
xfce4-session --version : 4.12.1
xfce4-terminal --version : 4.12
Here is my issue:
If I go to "Application" -> "Settings" -> "Appearance", there are 5 items listed under the Style tab:
Adwaita
Adwaita-dark
High Contrast
Raleigh
oxygen-gtk
If I choose anything other than oxygen-gtk, then no highlighting is visible when I move my mouse to select items on the Applications menus or within Firefox's context menus. I am able to select items and click on the items. Oddly highlighting is still visible in the xfce4-terminal context menus when using all but the Raleigh Styles. I am not sure whether the context menu selected item highlighting is visible in other applications.
1. How do I restore context menu item highlighting for the themes that don't show it? Is the color of the highlighting something I need to customize? Is this just a graphical glitch that can't be fixed?
2. Can the individual elements (window border color, text color, etc.) of a style be customized? Some of the presets above have text/window background color combinations that make the text almost impossible to read (i.e. black text on a dark gray window background).
Note I don't have root access so my options for fixing the above may be limited to non-existent.
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Hello and welcome.
I don't know what version of XFCE4 I am running because the two methods used to determine this as returned by my search results don't work: xfce4-about isn't installed, and "Applications"->"Documentation" doesn't contain an "About XFCE" menu item. Having said that, if I use the --version flag for specific XFCE4 components, I see the following version numbers:
xfce4-panel --version : 4.12.1
xfce4-session --version : 4.12.1
For your issues, 4.12 is fine and it is important to note that this is the GTK2 version of Xfce.
xfce4-terminal --version : 4.12
This is not correct. Can you double check the version? It should be 0.x.x something.
Here is my issue:
If I go to "Application" -> "Settings" -> "Appearance", there are 5 items listed under the Style tab:
Adwaita
Adwaita-dark
High Contrast
Raleigh
oxygen-gtk
Note: as user, you can install other themes to ~/.themes (create the folder if it doesn't exist) and they will show up in this list. If at all possible, install (copy over) the Greybird theme as it is a good test theme.
If I choose anything other than oxygen-gtk, then no highlighting is visible when I move my mouse to select items on the Applications menus or within Firefox's context menus. I am able to select items and click on the items. Oddly highlighting is still visible in the xfce4-terminal context menus when using all but the Raleigh Styles. I am not sure whether the context menu selected item highlighting is visible in other applications.
Alot of this is going to depend on which toolkit (GTK2 or GTK3, or possibly even QT) each of these applications are built upon and the themes you have installed. Can you be specific about which applications (versions included), other than firefox, that are problematic?
We can use the desktop right-click menu as a test. It will be built on GTK2 in your install. Are you able to see any highlighting when using the Raleigh or oxygen-gtk theme on it? If not, is there any content in an (hidden) .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory?
1. How do I restore context menu item highlighting for the themes that don't show it? Is the color of the highlighting something I need to customize? Is this just a graphical glitch that can't be fixed?
It can be customized but you need to verify the information as above.
2. Can the individual elements (window border color, text color, etc.) of a style be customized? Some of the presets above have text/window background color combinations that make the text almost impossible to read (i.e. black text on a dark gray window background).
Yes.
Note I don't have root access so my options for fixing the above may be limited to non-existent.
You should be able to fix this without root access.
Which distro are you using?
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This is not correct. Can you double check the version? It should be 0.x.x something.
Right, it's actually 0.8.7.4 (Xfce 4.12).
Alot of this is going to depend on which toolkit (GTK2 or GTK3, or possibly even QT) each of these applications are built upon and the themes you have installed. Can you be specific about which applications (versions included), other than firefox, that are problematic?
At the moment I don't have any other applications that exhibit this issue. My comment was only to say that I haven't gone through every application on the system specifically looking for which ones do and which ones do not have the issue. I can update my post if/when I discover more.
We can use the desktop right-click menu as a test. It will be built on GTK2 in your install. Are you able to see any highlighting when using the Raleigh or oxygen-gtk theme on it?
Raleigh: no
oxygen-gtk: yes
If not, is there any content in an (hidden) .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory?
There is no .gtkrc-2.0 file in my home directory.
You should be able to fix this without root access.
Which distro are you using?
RHEL 7.6
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Create the hidden file .gtkrc-2.0 and insert the following content:
style "my-menu-item"
{
bg[PRELIGHT] = "#FF0000"
}
widget_class "*<GtkMenuItem>*" style "my-menu-item"
...and restart the xfdesktop:
pkill xfdesktop
Now when you right-click the desktop, the menu highlight (hover) background colours should be red. Can you confirm that this happens on your desktop?
Note: If you log out and back in again, all menu items should have red hover backgrounds.
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Create the hidden file .gtkrc-2.0 and insert the following content:
style "my-menu-item" { bg[PRELIGHT] = "#FF0000" } widget_class "*<GtkMenuItem>*" style "my-menu-item"
...and restart the xfdesktop:
pkill xfdesktop
Now when you right-click the desktop, the menu highlight (hover) background colours should be red. Can you confirm that this happens on your desktop?
Note: If you log out and back in again, all menu items should have red hover backgrounds.
I created the .gtkrc-2.0 file in my home directory and ran "pkill xfdesktop", but the context menu that appears when I right click the desktop still has the default light gray highlighting when using the oxygen-gtk style. I did not try logging out and back in, but based on your quoted message that should not be necessary to apply the changes, correct?
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Hmm. Is it possibly locked down somehow? Can you post back the results of the following commands:
cat ~/.gtkrc-2.0
ps -ef | grep -E 'xf|desktop'
Does it work with Raleigh theme?
Also, are you connecting locally or through some sort of remote service?
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Hmm. Is it possibly locked down somehow? Can you post back the results of the following commands:
> cat ~/.gtkrc-2.0
style "my-menu-item"
{
bg[PRELIGHT] = "#FF0000"
}
widget_class "*<GtkMenuItem>*" style "my-menu-item"
The other command returns a lot of things, plus I'm not the only user on the machine so I don't want to just post everything. Is there something specific I should be looking for?
Does it work with Raleigh theme?
Yes, the red highlighting does show up if I change the theme to Raleigh.
Also, are you connecting locally or through some sort of remote service?
Remote through VNC.
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ToZ wrote:Does it work with Raleigh theme?
Yes, the red highlighting does show up if I change the theme to Raleigh.
Are you specifically tied to the oxygen-gtk theme or will the raleigh one do? You can change the colour code "FF0000" to any other code to make it fit better. At least we know we can tweak it.
You can also have a look through https://www.xfce-look.org/browse/cat/135/ord/rating/ to see if there is any other theme that looks good. Extracting the download to ~/.themes should make it available, but sometimes there are some extra steps.
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Citizen Snips wrote:ToZ wrote:Does it work with Raleigh theme?
Yes, the red highlighting does show up if I change the theme to Raleigh.
Are you specifically tied to the oxygen-gtk theme or will the raleigh one do? You can change the colour code "FF0000" to any other code to make it fit better. At least we know we can tweak it.
You can also have a look through https://www.xfce-look.org/browse/cat/135/ord/rating/ to see if there is any other theme that looks good. Extracting the download to ~/.themes should make it available, but sometimes there are some extra steps.
I'm not tied to any specific theme. My main goal was just to understand why the context menu highlighting wasn't displaying properly on some themes and also what options I had to customize themes.
So does the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file apply changes globally that override whatever theme I'm currently using? Can every aspect of a theme be customized via placing the proper keywords/syntax in the .gtkrc-2.0 file?
Also the themes link you posted above takes me to a list of GTK3 themes rather than GTK2 themes. Should I be looking in the GTK2 section of that website given that my setup doesn't use GTK3?
Last edited by Citizen Snips (2020-05-07 20:39:07)
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So does the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file apply changes globally that override whatever theme I'm currently using? Can every aspect of a theme be customized via placing the proper keywords/syntax in the .gtkrc-2.0 file?
Yes and yes. The normal location for themes is /usr/share/themes. System-wide overrides can be placed in /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc or /etc/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and user-based tweaks can be placed in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 or ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css. Note that gtk3 converted to CSS type styling for their widgets.
Here is a introductory page on GTK2 theming and here is Gnome's GTK3 theming documentation. It is important to note that you will most likely have a combination of GTK2 and GTK3-based apps, so the configurations and configuration locations will be different depending on the app.
Also the themes link you posted above takes me to a list of GTK3 themes rather than GTK2 themes. Should I be looking in the GTK2 section of that website given that my setup doesn't GTK3?
Most GTK3 themes also have GTK2 stylings added, but GTK2 themes may not have GTK3 stylings (especially older ones). You are safer using GTK3 themes to ensure that you get a more consistent look between the two toolkits. It really depends on the theme. The higher rated ones tend to be the most complete ones.
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Note that gtk3 converted to CSS type styling for their widgets.
Just to clarify, is your sample .gtkrc-2.0 file above not using CSS? I'm not familiar with CSS in general.
Here is a introductory page on GTK2 theming and here is Gnome's GTK3 theming documentation.
Another clarification: Gnome is another desktop environment, but its developers also created the GTK toolkits that can be used to develop GUIs for any application, including XFCE?
Finally, is the reason the global override you posted above didn't work with my oxygen-gtk style is because the oxygen-gtk theme is GTK3.0 and didn't recognize the GTK 2.0 override?
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ToZ wrote:Note that gtk3 converted to CSS type styling for their widgets.
Just to clarify, is your sample .gtkrc-2.0 file above not using CSS? I'm not familiar with CSS in general.
No its not CSS. It was pre-CSS syntax. With GTK3, they moved to CSS syntax.
Another clarification: Gnome is another desktop environment, but its developers also created the GTK toolkits that can be used to develop GUIs for any application, including XFCE?
Correct. Many applications and other desktop environments also use the GTK toolkit. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK
Finally, is the reason the global override you posted above didn't work with my oxygen-gtk style is because the oxygen-gtk theme is GTK3.0 and didn't recognize the GTK 2.0 override?
You'd have to have a closer look at the actual oxygen-gtk theme files installed on your system to determine why it doesn't work. Applications that are built with GTK3 will use ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and applications that are built with GTK2 will use ~/.gtkrc-2.0 as locations for user-based customization overrides.
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I was able to successfully install the "material-black COLORS Complete Desktop" theme:
https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1316887/
by downloading the .zip file and extracting it to ~/.themes/Material-Black-Blueberry
I then went to Application->Settings->Window Manager and selected "Material-Black-Blueberry" from the list of Themes, which changed the window border appearance but not the windows themselves.
I then went to Application->Settings->Appearance and selected "Material-Black-Blueberry" from the list of Styles, but the resulting appearance is unusable because the text font color is dark gray and the window background color is an even darker gray.
1. Are these really the default colors for this theme? The pictures on the Material Black webpage show a much higher contrast between the lighter font color and the darker window background color that what I'm seeing. How can I replicate that?
2. There are still some elements, such as the taskbar, that do not change color even when I select Material-Black-Blueberry from the list of Styles. Do these elements require further customization to match the color scheme?
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Are you able to provide a screenshot? I wonder if something is over-ridding the settings.
Ensure that your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css files are empty.
Can you also post back the results of the following command:
xfconf-query -c xsettings -lv
Here is how it looks like on a fedora 19 VM (don't have access to rhel):
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Ensure that your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css files are empty.
The ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file only contains the lines you posted above to test the red highlighting of selected items on the desktop context menu. Just to be sure I commented all of that out and restarted the desktop, but that didn't change the issue I am having with the font and window background colors of Material-Black-Blueberry. There is no ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css file.
Can you also post back the results of the following command:
> xfconf-query -c xsettings -lv
/Gtk/ButtonImages true
/Gtk/CanChangeAccels false
/Gtk/ColorPalette black:white:gray50:red:purple:blue:light blue:green:yellow:orange:lavender:brown:goldenrod4:dodger blue:pink:light green:gray10:gray30:gray75:gray90
/Gtk/CursorThemeName
/Gtk/CursorThemeSize 0
/Gtk/DecorationLayout menu:minimize,maximize,close
/Gtk/FontName Sans 10
/Gtk/IconSizes
/Gtk/KeyThemeName
/Gtk/MenuBarAccel F10
/Gtk/MenuImages true
/Gtk/ToolbarIconSize 3
/Gtk/ToolbarStyle icons
/Net/CursorBlink true
/Net/CursorBlinkTime 1200
/Net/DndDragThreshold 8
/Net/DoubleClickDistance 5
/Net/DoubleClickTime 400
/Net/EnableEventSounds false
/Net/EnableInputFeedbackSounds false
/Net/IconThemeName gnome
/Net/SoundThemeName default
/Net/ThemeName oxygen-gtk
/Xft/Antialias 1
/Xft/HintStyle hintfull
/Xft/Hinting -1
/Xft/RGBA none
The above is when the oxygen-gtk theme is selected; when the Material-Black-Blueberry theme is selected, the output of the command is identical except /Net/ThemeName is "Material-Black-Blueberry" instead of "oxygen-gtk".
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Can you post a screenshot with the Material-Black-Blueberry theme? Grab a full screenshot and upload it to imgbb or imgur and post back the link.
I just had a closer look at the oxygen-gtk theme and the reason why the gtkrc-2.0 changes don't work is because it uses the oxygen gtk engine. Oxygen is a KDE/QT product and I don't have much experience with it or how to fine tune the engine (or if you can).
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Can you post a screenshot with the Material-Black-Blueberry theme? Grab a full screenshot and upload it to imgbb or imgur and post back the link.
I just had a closer look at the oxygen-gtk theme and the reason why the gtkrc-2.0 changes don't work is because it uses the oxygen gtk engine. Oxygen is a KDE/QT product and I don't have much experience with it or how to fine tune the engine (or if you can).
I'd rather not post screenshots given that it's not my machine. Is there any further debug that can be done without them?
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ToZ wrote:Also, are you connecting locally or through some sort of remote service?
Remote through VNC.
I wonder whether VNC is somehow changing the resolution depth so that you aren't getting a proper display (or at least one capable of managing a large number of colours). What does the following return:
xdpyinfo | grep -A12 "#0"
What colour depth are you using for the vnc connection?
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Citizen Snips wrote:ToZ wrote:Also, are you connecting locally or through some sort of remote service?
Remote through VNC.
I wonder whether VNC is somehow changing the resolution depth so that you aren't getting a proper display (or at least one capable of managing a large number of colours). What does the following return:
xdpyinfo | grep -A12 "#0"
> xdpyinfo | grep -A12 "#0"
screen #0:
dimensions: 5120x1380 pixels (1355x365 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
depths (7): 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 24
root window id: 0x31d
depth of root window: 24 planes
number of colormaps: minimum 1, maximum 1
default colormap: 0x20
default number of colormap cells: 256
preallocated pixels: black 0, white 16777215
options: backing-store WHEN MAPPED, save-unders NO
largest cursor: 5120x1380
current input event mask: 0xfac03f
What colour depth are you using for the vnc connection?
24-bit according to the "-depth 24" argument I'm passing to the vncserver command.
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So to recap:
- oxygen-gtk theme can't be tweaked. This is because it is managed by the oxygen engine and I don't know how to configure that.
- raleigh theme is configurable. It is the default GTK2 theme.
- Material-Black-Blueberry works, but the colours are all off. I am not sure why this is happening. It is possible that there is some system-wide configuration that is interfering.
Can you try the Greybird theme to see if that works okay?
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Can you try the Greybird theme to see if that works okay?
Using the Greybird themes produces some very strange/inconsistent behavior. If I specify the "Greybird-dark" theme in both the Appearance->Style and Window Manager->Style menus:
* highlighting of selected menu items on the desktop and applications context menu disappears; if I add the code you posted earlier to .gtkrc-2.0 and reload my desktop, the red highlighting shows up for the desktop menu context highlighting but not for the applications menu.
* some windows completely change color to match the "Greybird-dark" theme, while on others only the title bar changes color; for example, if I right click on the desktop and click "Desktop Settings", the resulting window that appears is various shades of dark grey with light grey text. Everything is readable and looks fine. On the other hand, the "Appearance" and "Window Manager" windows I have open to change themes remain the default light grey color except for their title bars, which change to dark grey with light grey text to match the title bar of the "Desktop Settings" window. The taskbar and minimized program icons remain the default light grey color even if the Greybird-dark theme is selected.
* Highlighting of menu items in the "Appearance" and "Window Manager" remains a light blue color, as does the highlighting of the current Workspace in the workspace switcher item on my taskbar.
Basically it seems like themes are being applied to some elements, windows, and text, but not all. I'm not sure where else these colors are being set that would override my themes.
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* some windows completely change color to match the "Greybird-dark" theme, while on others only the title bar changes color; for example, if I right click on the desktop and click "Desktop Settings", the resulting window that appears is various shades of dark grey with light grey text. Everything is readable and looks fine. On the other hand, the "Appearance" and "Window Manager" windows I have open to change themes remain the default light grey color except for their title bars, which change to dark grey with light grey text to match the title bar of the "Desktop Settings" window. The taskbar and minimized program icons remain the default light grey color even if the Greybird-dark theme is selected.
Try manually restarting the xfsettings daemon
xfsettingsd --replace
...and the panel:
xfce4-panel -r
...does that make a difference?
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* some windows completely change color to match the "Greybird-dark" theme, while on others only the title bar changes color; for example, if I right click on the desktop and click "Desktop Settings", the resulting window that appears is various shades of dark grey with light grey text. Everything is readable and looks fine. On the other hand, the "Appearance" and "Window Manager" windows I have open to change themes remain the default light grey color except for their title bars, which change to dark grey with light grey text to match the title bar of the "Desktop Settings" window. The taskbar and minimized program icons remain the default light grey color even if the Greybird-dark theme is selected.
Try manually restarting the xfsettings daemon
xfsettingsd --replace
...and the panel:
xfce4-panel -r
...does that make a difference?
Currently I have "Style" in the "Window Manager" set to "Material-Black-Blueberry" and "Style" in the "Appearance" window set to "oxygen-gtk".
If I change the theme in the "Style" window to "Greybird-Dark" and the style in the "Appearance" window to "Greybird-Dark", the behavior is as described in my previous post.
If I then run xfsettingsd --replace, nothing happens.
If I then run xfce4-panel -r, the taskbar reloads and is now a dark color consistent with the dark colors of the title bars of my open windows, but all text on the taskbar becomes a dark grey that is impossible to read against the slightly less dark grey background.
If I then close and reopen the 3 windows I had open ("Desktop", "Window Manager Tweaks", "Appearance"), all 3 reopen with what I believe to be correct colors (dark grey background, light grey text that is perfectly readable).
Highlighting of context menu items works correctly and uses the red value I specified in my .gtkrc-2.0 file.
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It sounds like the theme changes are not being automatically changed. Do you have an ~/.xsession-errors file or another log file that logs x session errors to it? Maybe an VNC log file of some sort? If so, have a look to see if there are any errors posted when you try to change the theme.
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There is no ~/.xsession-errors file, but in the VNC log file I see the following appear whenever I switch to the Material-Black-Blueberry theme:
(xfce4-appfinder:84057): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.897: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfce4-apperance-settings:68596): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.899: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfwm4-settings:68919): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.900: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(wrapper-1.0:68461): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.900: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfce-polkit:78104): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.903: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfdesktop-settings:68604): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.904: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfce4-session:77965): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.904: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfwm4:77978): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.904: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfdesktop:13438): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.904: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(xfce4-panel:68457): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.904: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(wrapper-1.0:68462): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:46:28.900: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
Switching to oxygen-gtk produces none of these warnings, and switching to either Greybird-Dark or Greybird-Light produces the same warnings, but many more occurrences of each.
Am I correct in assuming that if I install that theme engine my colors will display correctly?
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