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Prof.P

Member

Registered: 2020-06-04

Posts: 3

GUI Tool/Tweak to modify color of Window Title

Hello there,

is there a tool/GUI application for current XFCE4 Desktop to modify/adjust the windows title background color?
In my themes I have only too dark or too light window title background colors.

My setup:
OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
DE: Xfce 4.14
WM: Xfwm4
WM Theme: Matcha-azul
Theme: Matcha-dark-azul [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3]
Icons: Papirus [GTK2], Adwaita [GTK3]

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,482

Re: GUI Tool/Tweak to modify color of Window Title

Hello and welcome.

Unfortunately, there is no tool that will do this automatically for you. Usually, xfwm4 themes use xpm files and they can be manipulated as text files to change the colour values. However, the Matcha-dark-azul xfwm4 theme does not use xpm files, it does it all with PNGs.

But all is not lost. You can use a little bash-foo and the convert command from the imagemagick package to bulk re-colour that theme.

First, copy the theme files to ~/.themes. This will allow you to keep a local copy that won't get potentially overwritten with system updates:

mkdir -p ~/.themes
cd ~/.themes
cp -rv /usr/share/themes/Matcha-dark-azul .

...and rename the theme to distinguish it from the original:

mv Matcha-dark-azul Matcha-dark-azul-custom

The Matcha-dark-azul theme uses the rbg colours (8,9,11) for the background of all xfwm4 elements (active and inactive). Here is a script that you can use to change this colour for all "active" elements in the theme (run this command in the xfwm4 directory of the theme - after you've made a backup of those files). First go to the xfwm4 directory:

cd ~/.themes/Matcha-dark-azul/xfwm4

...then change the colour:

for f in $(ls *-active*); do echo "$f"; echo .; convert "$f" -fuzz 10% -fill 'rgb(255,0,0)' -opaque 'rgb(8,9,11)' "$f"; done

• this will affect only the active files "*-active*". To affect inactive state files, use "*-inactive*".

• it re-colours it to red (255,0,0) - change that value to change the final output colour

Finally, change the Window Manager theme to your new custom theme to see the change.

It may not be ideal, but it is the best that can be done with this theme. Other options include finding another window manager theme to use or manually editing each individual PNG file. It also looks like you might be able to edit source svg files and then build the theme from scratch to make different colours. Might be best to ask the developer about this though.

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Prof.P

Member

Registered: 2020-06-04

Posts: 3

Re: GUI Tool/Tweak to modify color of Window Title

Hello and welcome.
...

Thank you very much for your detailed explanations and guides.

I'll try it this way.

Prof.P

Member

Registered: 2020-06-04

Posts: 3

Re: GUI Tool/Tweak to modify color of Window Title

...
However, the Matcha-dark-azul xfwm4 theme does not use xpm files, it does it all with PNGs.

But all is not lost. You can use a little bash-foo and the convert command from the imagemagick package to bulk re-colour that theme.

Thank you very much for your response.
I just don't unterstand which element ist repsonbible for this bar color (highlighted in red).

https://pasteboard.co/Jc8pPm1.png

Is this a png?
Is this a text? "Title_Shadow"? I played around with those settings (created a customer theme based on the original theme and placed in ~/.themes) but it seems there is no impact when I select my custom theme from the appeareance settings.

Last edited by Prof.P (2020-06-08 12:38:38)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,482

Re: GUI Tool/Tweak to modify color of Window Title

I just don't unterstand which element ist repsonbible for this bar color (highlighted in red).

https://pasteboard.co/Jc8pPm1.png
https://pasteboard.co/Jc8pPm1.png

That bar is created from a series of, in the case of Matcha-dark-azul, PNG files. See here for the names of the PNG files.

Is this a text? "Title_Shadow"? I played around with those settings (created a customer theme based on the original theme and placed in ~/.themes) but it seems there is no impact when I select my custom theme from the appeareance settings.

The text (title) is overlayed onto the png files and the settings for this text are located in the themerc file that you posted.

So basically, to change the colour of the bar you want changed, you need to edit the individual png files.

Here is the Matcha-dark-azul theme as published by the developer:

And here it is after running the script above (granted, not a best choice of colour, but you can tweak that):

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