[SOLVED] XFCE Theme Customization Tool

Question

Good evening Arch Community,
Now that LXDE (My DE of choice) is about to be dropped from the normal repos, I felt it time to move to a supported DE. My next choice was XFCE. I'm sorry that Arch has decided to slowly move LXDE to the AUR from the mainstream repos.
XFCE is a nice, and capable DE. But it has always been an achilles heel to me with regard to theme customizations. But tweaking theme colors is no easy task. With LXDE, I could easily "tweak" the theme setting to my preferences. The white background hurts my old eyes.
In XFCE it seems that you have to understand the nuances of the gtkrc file to tweak theme colors. I don't have the time, nor the desire to become a gtkrc file format aficionado. I've got dev work I need to do.
I am hoping that the Arch community can point me to a GUI tool that will allow me to tweak theme settings graphically, just like the other DE's such as LXDE, KDE, Gnome 2. I have personal preferences for not using KDE, and I have to bite my lip regarding Gnome3.
XFCE would work for me if I can just get through two color changes. just two. If I can tweak these, I'll be a happy camper indeed.
I've also posted to the XFCE forums, but, unfortuntely, as usual when I ask color questions, I get categorically blown off. Clearly, the lack of an easy theme tweaking tool being a weak spot for XFCE as a DE.
I've gone through all the themes......and downloaded some new ones. I just do not like the xfce.dusk theme, nor the white backgrounds of the others.
I am using Moomex as a theme, and just want to tweak two settings:
a) The default background color of an opened window
b) The bg/fg colors of the WindowButton items on the task bar. Currently the WindowButton's of opened tasks show up as white text on a very light grey background. Difficult if not impossible to read.
If someone could point me towards a tool I would be appreciative. Or if someone knows the two magic field names that I need to tweak in my gtkrc file of my current theme to change the two items outlines above, I would also be appreciative.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Dave
Last edited by dcbdbis (2011-10-11 17:23:15)

Answer 1

Forgive me for being too verbose. Within XFCE there is no mechanism to adjust theme colors. Example: Within a specific theme, there is no GUI dialog to open, and adjust the default window background of the chosen theme. You are forced to manually edit the gtkrc file. In LXDE, I have a small GUI where I can take my chosen theme, and adjust the color of a selected item, in this case, the window background. A few clicks, and it's done.
There is no such facility in XFCE.
From what I've read (unless I'm misunderstanding) is that the color changer in LXDE is specific to LXDE. It actually doesn't tweak the original gtkrc file, rather it tweaks some settings in a local file unto itself and by some mechanism unknown to me at this time, "melds" the original gtkrc file with the customizations by the user. I've looked at the original gtkrc files in "/usr/share/themes" after I've tweaked them. They are unchanged.
For now, I've reverted to an LXDE/OpenBox hybrid. I hope someone in Arch decides that LXDE is worth keeping in the repos, like e16 & e17.
I had originally tried XFCE because Arch had announced that LXDE was being reverted to the AUR and out of the official repos.
Hopefully, this clarifies things.
Thanks!
Dave