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How to Create and Use Themes
by jeff covey, in Themes - Sat, May 25th 2002 00:00 PDT

Since we started hosting themes, we've had many people email us or pop on IRC and ask what they're supposed to do with groovytheme-0.16.tar.gz. In this article, I'll offer instructions for all the window managers we cover.

Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly.

How to Create Themes

I originally intended to give instructions for creating themes for each window manager, as I've done below for using themes. When I looked through the documentation for each window manager, I decided against doing it. In some cases, the theme files have a large number of configuration items, and it would be easier for you to refer to the window manager's own most recent documentation than for me to keep this article up-to-date with the changes. In others, tools for creating themes have become available, and you would hate me if you followed guidelines here to write a 300-line file, only to find out you could have just clicked a button.

If you want to get started creating themes for your favorite window manager, check the documentation in its tarball or on its Web site. If you can't find instructions, try downloading a theme you like and editing its files until you come up with your own theme. Just don't expect us to include it in our database if all you've done is change an existing theme's background from color to black-and-white. ;^)

How to Use Themes

Preliminaries

Installing a theme almost always involves unpacking a tarball somewhere. If you're not familiar with tar, the two incantations you should remember are "tar tzvf [filename]" and "tar xzvf [filename]". The first version only tests ("t") what would happen if you actually unpacked the tarball. The second really extracts ("x") the contents.

You should run a test first because theme authors aren't always careful about how they pack their files. If you see this:

$ tar tzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root       368 2000-02-25 20:14:08 icondefs.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root        68 1999-12-21 20:01:57 sound.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root        74 1999-12-21 20:01:57 tooltips.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       962 2000-05-23 10:17:38 windowmatches.cfg

, watch out; it's going to spit all those files into the current directory. If your window manager expects each theme to be in its own directory, you'll need to create a directory for it first. For example, if this were an IceWM theme, you would want to do this:

$ mkdir ~/.icewm/themes/bob/
$ mv bob-0.1.tar.gz ~/.icewm/themes/bob/
$ cd ~/.icewm/themes/bob/
$ tar xzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz

(and rm bob-0.1.tar.gz if you know you don't want it anymore).

If instead you see this:

$ tar tzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root       368 2000-02-25 20:14:08 bob/icondefs.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root        68 1999-12-21 20:01:57 bob/sound.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root        74 1999-12-21 20:01:57 bob/tooltips.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root       962 2000-05-23 10:17:38 bob/windowmatches.cfg

, you don't need to worry; the bob/ directory will be created when the tarball is unpacked. In this case, you can just do this:

$ mv bob-0.1.tar.gz ~/.icewm/themes/
$ cd ~/.icewm/themes/
$ tar xzvf bob-0.1.tar.gz

Where to unpack the tarball (or even whether you need to unpack it at all) depends on the window manager.

Instructions

Here are the specific instructions for each window manager:

Afterstep
Blackbox
Enlightenment
Fluxbox
FVWM
GTK
IceWM
KDE
Metacity
Sawfish
Window Maker
XFCE

Afterstep

Afterstep themes should be installed in ~/GNUstep/Library/AfterStep/themes/[themename]/. After a theme has been added, update Afterstep's theme menu by clicking on "Start --> Desktop --> Update startmenu", then select the theme from the menu with "Start --> Desktop --> Theme --> [themename]".

Blackbox

Blackbox themes (known as "styles") are problematic due to lack of standardization in earlier versions. Where you put your style files depends on how you configured Blackbox when you installed it or how your distribution's packager configured it. The default location is now ~/.blackbox/, but theme authors may assume you're keeping your styles in ~/.blackbox/, ~/blackbox/, /usr/share/blackbox/, or any random place that they themselves keep their files on their own systems.

The problem with this can be seen in the first Blackbox style I downloaded. It contained this line to set the background:

rootCommand: Esetroot /home/glitch/blackbox/gits/gits.jpg

That's all well and good, except that:

I don't have Esetroot installed.
I don't have a /home/glitch/ directory on my system, let alone anything in it.
The tarball unpacked gits.jpg as Background/gits.jpg, so I have no idea how it was supposed to work even on the author's own system.

Unfortunately, you're going to have to tinker a bit to get Blackbox styles to work. Luckily, there are only two files in each Blackbox style tarball, the background image and the style file. Once you've determined where your Blackbox installation expects to find style files (on Debian, ~/.blackbox/styles/ will work for personal use and /usr/share/blackbox/styles/ for system-wide use), take these three steps:

Manually move the background to where you keep your Blackbox backgrounds.
Manually move the style file to where you keep your Blackbox styles.
Look at the style file.
1. Make sure the rootCommand line uses an application you actually have installed to set the background image.
2. Make sure it points to where the background image actually is.
3. If you have font problems, make sure the *Font line references a font that's installed on your system.

[Insert moral about standardization here.]

Enlightenment

Enlightenment themes should be installed in ~/.enlightenment/themes/[themename]/. After you've installed a new one, just restart Enlightenment and select it on the Themes menu.

Fluxbox

Fluxbox themes are almost identical to Blackbox themes, so you can use the same guidelines for both. The difference is that Fluxbox themes contain a superset of the types of information in Blackbox themes, including instructions for handling Fluxbox tabs.

Blackbox themes can be used by Fluxbox. If there isn't any format for the tab in the theme, the tab will have the same theme as the titlebar.

FVWM

FVWM themes are handled by the tools in the FVWM Themes project. fvwm-themes-config unpacks theme tarballs and checks for theme conflicts. It installs them in ~/.fvwm/themes/ for personal use or system-wide in /usr/share/fvwm/themes/.

Installation is as simple as:

fvwm-themes-config --install ft-example-theme-0.6.x.tar.gz

or:

fvwm-themes-config --site --install ft-example-theme-0.6.x.tar.gz

GTK

There are two ways to install GTK themes.

If you use GNOME, you can manage themes with the GNOME control center. Launch it with "gnomecc &", then navigate the menus to "Desktop --> Theme selector". Click on "Install new theme..." and point it toward the tarball. There's no need to unpack it.

If you don't use GNOME (or don't want to bother with gnomecc), you can use Gtk Theme Switch, which can switch themes from the commandline or sit on the GNOME Panel for quick access.

IceWM

IceWM themes should be installed in ~/.icewm/themes/[themename]/. After you've installed a new one, just restart IceWM and select it on the Themes menu.

KDE

The tarballs of themes for KDE 2.x and later should contain a file with a .ktheme extension (which is itself a gzipped tarball). To install the theme, open the KDE Control Center and navigate to "Look & Feel --> Theme Manager", click on "Add...", and point the dialog to the .ktheme file.

Metacity

Metacity themes should be installed in ~/.themes/[themename].

If you are using GNOME 2.0.x, the only way to change themes is by changing the /apps/metacity/general/theme gconf key with gconf-editor or gconftool-2 to the name of the theme you want to use. For example:

gconftool-2 --type=string --set ~/.themes/[themename] [themename]

If you are using GNOME 2.1.x or Red Hat 8.0, Metacity themes can be changed with the theme manager by selecting Applications --> Desktop Properties --> Theme.

Sawfish

Sawfish themes should be installed in ~/.sawfish/themes/[themename]/. A distinguishing characteristic of Sawfish is that it can apply different themes to different windows, so there are two ways to use a theme after you've installed it. To apply it to one window, right-click the window's titlebar and select the theme from the "Frame style" menu. To apply it to all windows, select "Customize --> Appearance" from the root window menu, and select the theme in the "Default frame style" dropdown box.

Window Maker

Window Maker themes should be unpacked in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Themes/, and should create [themename].themed directories for themselves. (Thanks to Erik Fredricks for the update on this.)

After a theme has been installed, you can select it on the Themes menu or type setstyle [themefile].

[Update: we now have instructions on converting old Window Maker themes here.]

XFCE

XFCE themes are managed through the xfskin program. After you've downloaded a theme, type "xfskin &", navigate to the "file --> add" menu item, point the file selector to the tarball, and click "install". xfskin can also be used to create and delete themes.

Updates

As work on window managers progresses, these instructions will become out-of-date. If you see something here that no longer applies, please let us know, and we'll make the appropriate changes. Thanks for your help.

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Comments

[»] applets
by Chuck - Jan 21st 2008 08:46:22

I'm running on Enlightenment. I followed the instructions pretty well until the part that says in the instructions, "themes menu", ???? I have no themes menu anywhere. Do I have to create it? I want a theme of style like this roommate website. And also, where do I install the epplets? (From that I do have a menu).