Xfce Forum

septicity

Member

Registered: 2023-12-20

Posts: 2

XFWM4: Icons for Hovered Window Buttons in Inactive Windows?

Hello all!
I've been researching this problem for a while, but haven't seen any conclusive information on the state of this feature:

I'm tweaking a theme for XFWM4, and I've run into some trouble getting it to behave like what I'm trying to imitate. Specifically, there are specific icons for window buttons that are hovered over (e.g. close-prelight.xpm), those that are in an inactive window (e.g. close-inactive.xpm), and those that are pressed (e.g. close-pressed.xpm). However, as far as I can tell, there is none for a window button that is both hovered and inactive. (There is also none for a button that is both pressed and inactive, but this makes sense; the window would become active as the button is pressed.)
I assume this is simply not a feature, but this could also just mean that the filename the theme expects is different. Based on the existing naming conventions, I assumed {button}-{state}-inactive or {button}-inactive-{state}, and neither worked. If there is a name apart from these that it expects, please let me know!

Since I'm aware this post is not worded in a very legible way, I will include an animated example.

If this is an existing feature and I just don't know how to access it, please tell me! Otherwise, if this isn't a feature, consider this a feature request. Hoping y'all can help either way!

chang-zhao

Member

Registered: 2023-11-20

Posts: 42

Re: XFWM4: Icons for Hovered Window Buttons in Inactive Windows?

It doesn't seem to be:
https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/xfwm4_theme

But to be sure, check the source code (and direct feature requests there):
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4

PS.
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/-/bl … =heads#L44

Last edited by chang-zhao (2023-12-20 15:42:33)

septicity

Member

Registered: 2023-12-20

Posts: 2

Re: XFWM4: Icons for Hovered Window Buttons in Inactive Windows?

Well, now I know that this isn't a feature... because I've found it in a 12-year-old issue: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/-/issues/63.
Thanks chang-zhao for the link! I'm experienced enough to somewhat comprehend what's going on there but absolutely not enough to work with it or make a fix
I'm going to make a post on the GitLab issue with similar information and indicate interest. I only plan to mark this post as solved if the feature gets added or if I get a solid no from the devs, unless it'd be more customary to mark it as solved at this point.

chang-zhao

Member

Registered: 2023-11-20

Posts: 42

Re: XFWM4: Icons for Hovered Window Buttons in Inactive Windows?

Actually I doubt that "prelight" buttons for active and inactive windows should look different.

The meaning of hovering over a button is that clicking would perform an action, and it's the same for active and inactive windows.

E.g. clicking "close" button tells its window to be closed; not just "activate this to request exit" or something.

Then, semantically, doesn't the hovered "close" button need to show the same "caution" ("red") image?

Hence it makes sense to show those hovered buttons equally "prelighted" in both cases...

...Like the patch from that link suggests, I think. It should be easy to implement. (I don't know why devs didn't do that... Maybe they just didn't care about such an insignificant detail?)

You probably could test how it would look, building xfwm from source with that patch applied. The version built from source might be installed into "/usr/local/bin" instead of the usual "/usr/bin", and then you probably could run the built version from terminal or by a corrected path for xinit:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/xfwm#Starting