[gentoo-user] How do I select a GTK 3 theme?

Sebastian Pipping

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Jul 30, 2011, 8:00:02 PM7/30/11

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Hello!

I got x11-themes/gtk-engines:3 from the gnome overlay installed so GTK 3
engines are there. My problem is I don't know how to set a global theme
for GTK 3 (and the default is dead ugly). If it is file
~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini then I haven't got that to work, yet.

What's your recipe to select GTK 3 themes?
Any quality links or guidance would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Sebastian

Stroller

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Jul 31, 2011, 9:00:01 AM7/31/11

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On 31 July 2011, at 00:56, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
> ...

There's some discussion of theming and ugliness in GTK3 in Nikos' bug 374057.

This really isn't my manor (so please forgive me if I'm mistaken) but you might find, e.g., comment 38 useful.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374057#c38

There's mention of using the Adwaita theme and placing a symlink which appears to be required to get GTK3 to honour your theme selection.

I'm just surprised no-one else more knowledgable than I has answered yet.

David Abbott

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Jul 31, 2011, 10:10:02 AM7/31/11

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Hi Sebastian
I ran across this but did not try it yet;
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116652
I bet nirbheek would know :)
All the best,
David

Sebastian Pipping

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Aug 2, 2011, 1:50:02 PM8/2/11

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I played a bit more and found out a few bits:

- Changing "Style" in XFCE's appearance switches the theme
for both GTK+ 2.x and 3.x, no matter what key "gtk-theme-name"
of /etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini say
though these files are read according to strace

- The GTK+ 3.0 engine for Clearlooks (libclearlooks.so) seems to be
provided by both

A) x11-themes/gtk-engines-clearlooks-2.91.5 (gnome overlay)
B) x11-themes/gtk-engines-2.91.1 (gnome overlay)

at different locations:

A) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/theming-engines/libclearlooks.so
B) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/engines/libclearlooks.so

GTK seems to looks for (A) only according to strace.

- Neither package A nor B provide a file

/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

which is required to even activate the Clearlooks engine.
To active the engine, put the line

* { engine: clearlooks; }

in. Expect this to look ugly.

- By putting

[Settings]
gtk-theme-name = Clearlooks

into /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
you can produce endless loops. Nice!

From a workaround perspective the most interesting question to me is:
where do I get (default or good looking) CSS files for GTK+ 3.0 Clearlooks.

Best,

Sebastian

Sebastian Pipping

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Aug 2, 2011, 7:20:02 PM8/2/11

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Update:

I managed to get the light-themes (Ambiance and Radiance)[1] of Ubuntu
running for both GTK 2 and 3. Their GTK 3 versions make use of the
unico engine which requires rather recent gtk3 and glib.

To get it running you need install

x11-themes/light-themes

from the betagarden overlay [2]. You'll need to handle KEYWORDS=""
using keywords "**" one way or another. Use these packages at your own
risk.

On 08/02/2011 07:44 PM, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
> A) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/theming-engines/libclearlooks.so
> B) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/engines/libclearlooks.so
>
> GTK seems to looks for (A) only according to strace.

Correction, (A) is missing "3.0.0/" so it's rather:

A) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/theming-engines/libclearlooks.so
B) /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/engines/libclearlooks.so

Sebastian

[1]
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/ambiance-finally-ported-to-gtk3-ubuntu.html
[2] http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/betagarden.git;a=summary