The xfce-4.4 themes contest discussion

Question

As stated on http://blog.archlinux.org I posted the files for the contest on my server: http://arch.justdreams.net/xfce44-themings.tar.gz
I recommend to either fetch shadowhands xfce4-svn packages or the set I offer here http://arch.justdreams.net/xfce4-pkgs/
I use it already for daily use and didn't encounter serious problems.
The things you should consider if you like to add an entry.
· a usable, nice WM theme not too small and not too large, fitting for users from laptop sized screens to dual widescreen setups.
· a background image, that doesn't steal focus from work (read: no strong contrast, everything in like colors, makes it possible to use (semi)-transparent terminals, scales well over several desktop sizes, also fits on non 4:3 screens)
· a nice gtk-theme using gtk-xfce-engine (read: come with corporate colors, don't waste space but have usable handles) gtk-xfce-engine stays part of 4.4 (there were discussions to ditch the gtk-xfce-engine in favor of gtk's new standard engine clearlooks)
· a nice splashscreen theme (no real reglementations apart from colors)
for xfwm4 themes you wanna read http://www.xfce.org/xfwm4-theme-howto/
Xfwm-4.4 has some new features:
- you can use svg instead of png files (check: http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce4 … 21447.html for some details)
- you can replace the menu button by adding "show_app_icon=true" in themerc
The files you find in my tarball reflect the way I was working:
- create the design
- split design into the shape parts (provided by the xpm picturesthat can actually pick up gtk colours) and the shade parts(transparent pictures on top of xpms either png or svg)
- build the actual buttons (shape, colour etc)
- I exported the xpm from gimp and used a whole bunch of sed lines to flip colours to get the pressed and -active state (se the shell script in te directory for details)
The background image isn't tricky.
I added my gtkrc file in the tarball. It was mainly created from studying other gtkrc files since I didn't find some serious documentation on it.
The splashscreen is pretty much straight forward. I added a .blend file for a rendered Arch symbol. You don't have to use it. The old theme used the balou engine - you can use any other or write your own. Doesn't matter.
XFCE-4.4 is at rc1 at the moment. I think it's gonna take another month b4 it hits the final. After that we will have a poll at the forum to figure which theme the users like best.

Answer 1

rezza wrote:
Cimi wrote:
Yeah thanks! I think you can redraw buttons in rezlooks and use my function with CL_CORNER_NONE to get better look with squared theme.
Anyway what have you *stealed* from my works? yes i like that someone appreciate my works but it's always not fun thinking you've worked for days and someone *copy* your code. I hope this *steals* are originals since that could be an improvement not a simple copy! My engines are based on rezlooks/clearlooks but i've done a lot of original work for them!
"God bless opensource" as you said, I totally agree, expecially it the ways it comes with original things and not copies!
Hehehe, by "stealing", I only mean stuff like using that function to draw rectangles instead of just cairo_rectangle, stuff that you suggested anyway... most of the original stuff you do for Murrine would be wrong for Rezlooks anyway.
Yeah, I'll chat to you on IRC sometime soon, we can discuss some things. I've been very busy with real life recently, haven't had a chance to do any work on Rezlooks for a while, I am still planning on releasing 0.7 at some point though... And yeah, that collaborative engine we talked about will be awesome
Ok I just want to focus that murrine_rounded_rectangle has to be rewrite for with the next release of cairo (1.4.0) that will be released the next month will have a great performance improvement where lines are drawn aligned. In the current cairo version there's a bug in cairo_stroke which is twice slow than cairo_fill, so unless you fill the stroke of unaligned lines appears slow as aligned ones.
With next cairo release the "stroke bug" will be fixed and we'll have to rewrite function to get the new performance boost.
I had found occasionaly this bug yesterday when i was stripping down murrine toghether with benzea and thos, gnome developers.
If you see in the gnome cvs you'll find new fixing in a lot of engines that get twice as fast by implementing cairo_fill instead of cairo_stroke, waiting new cairo release for reverting it back...