Xfce Forum

jesuisbenjamin

Member

Registered: 2012-01-25

Posts: 17

Theme subsets not rendered in 4.10 on Fedora 16

Hello,

I am testing 4.10 on Fedora 16. I am now trying to install themes but most of the themes I use work partially. i.e. some widget do not render as screenshot prescribe. Some fail to render tabs or buttons or scrollbar depending on the themes. Some themes work in some application and fail to work in other applications like Gnome Terminal and Nautilus.

Am I missing some packages? Or are the themes badly prepared?

Could you advise? Thanks.
B.

angstrom

Member

Registered: 2011-08-13

Posts: 267

Re: Theme subsets not rendered in 4.10 on Fedora 16

I think it's because we are in the transition periode between gtk2 and gtk3. Theme for gtk3 won't apply on gtk2 application and vice versa. Your theme have to support both gtk2 and gtk3. Check in the theme folder and look if there is gtk-2.0 and gtk-3.0 folders.

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Xfce is NOT Xubuntu. Bugs in Xubuntu don't mean that Xfce is buggy ...

dyfet

Member

From: Cape May

Registered: 2011-05-28

Posts: 13

Website

Re: Theme subsets not rendered in 4.10 on Fedora 16

One thing that may work well is the kde oxygen gtk2 and gtk3 theme engines.  At least they tend to produce near consistent results for gtk2 and gtk3 apps, and you do not need to install kde to use them.  I am amazing that still there are no true unifying themes and engines for gtk2 and gtk3, and this I do think is a major "flaw" (in gtk...not Xfce .  You can find some gtk2 themes that are kinda matched okay with gtk3 ones, but the results do remain less than perfect even with the best of these, as they have to be written differently, the underlying engines (outside of the kde gtk oxygen case) are different, etc.

Last edited by dyfet (2012-05-10 22:55:11)

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"Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving" - Russell Means

jesuisbenjamin

Member

Registered: 2012-01-25

Posts: 17

Re: Theme subsets not rendered in 4.10 on Fedora 16

Thanks.

Take for instance the Gtk 2 "Soothe" theme from Deviant Art http://lassekongo83.deviantart.com/art/Soothe-199342656
Now compare with this screenshot of the same theme when applied: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/w … directlink

The situation is similar for many themes, though they contain Gtk2 folder as you said.

dyfet

Member

From: Cape May

Registered: 2011-05-28

Posts: 13

Website

Re: Theme subsets not rendered in 4.10 on Fedora 16

The particular theme in question (soothie) requires two separate gtk2 theme engines, murrine and pixbuf, both of which need to be present.  It may also require or use features missing in older murrine engines.  But perhaps a little background:

In gtk a theme often has two parts; a pluggable drawing engine that is c coded and installed in /usr/lib/gtk-[2|3].0/[version]/engines, and theme files that are in ~/.themes or /usr/share/themes.  All Xfce does is select the theme file to make active in appearence.  If gtk tries to use it, and the engine it requires is missing, you will likely get some error, and gtk will use a default (ugly) result.

The gtk library will send to stdout any error it has with a given theme when trying to initialize for the given program, so if you start almost any gtk app from the terminal rather than from a launcher or menu, you will be able to see what particular error (missing engine, etc) gtk found trying to use that theme.

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"Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving" - Russell Means