GTK-apps appearance in BT4 pre-final

[orange]

Community,

UPDATE: The tutorial below depends on the gnome-brave-icon-theme from the gnome-colors-packagers PPA for Intrepid. I presented this solution (from an icon perspective) due to the following reason: usually KDE3 icon themes are not conform with the FSF icon naming specification and thus the default BT4 icon-theme (nuvoX 0.7.1) does not work with GTK-apps. Today I managed to create a modified version of the default BT4 icon-theme that works with both KDE3 and GTK-apps utilizing the icon-naming-utils from the Tango Project. In a subseqent post I'll now present a solution that also covers the use of nuvoX for GTK-apps and thus delivers an even more complete integration of GTK-apps into the KDE3 desktop environment (QTCurve and nuvoX) - please decide by yourself which one you prefer personally (I myself use nuvoX now for GTK-apps)

from my perspective GTK-apps in BT4 pre-final doesn't look integrated at all into the KDE3 desktop experience. This is rather annoying as heavily used applications like e.g. firefox, synaptic, xchat, update-notifier, wicd and so on feel somewhat displaced. I did some investigation on this and like to share my findings with the BT community. During this tutorial we'll install the gnome-brave-icon-theme (the most complete gnome-icon-theme I'm aware of) and the QTCurve gtk-theme (this is the default since Jaunty) to achieve an integrated look & feel of GTK-apps while using BT4 pre-final with KDE3. So, here we go:

1st Step: Subscribe to the gnome-colors-packagers PPA for Intrepid, import its OpenPGP key and resynchronize the package index files from their sources

# sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
# apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 41c2359b9c2f88f0d47040322d79f61be8d31a30
# apt-get update

2nd Step: Install the required packages to achieve an integrated look & feel of GTK-apps

# apt-get install gtk2-engines-qtcurve kde-style-qtcurve kde-style-qtcurve-kde3 kdelibs4c2a qtcurve-kde3 gtk-qt-engine-kde3 gnome-brave-icon-theme gnome-colors-common

3rd Step: Navigate to Settings - Appearance & Themes - GTK Styles and Fonts from your KDE menu, select "Use another style: QTCurve" from the Dialog under "GTK Styles" and click "Apply"

4th Step: Open the configuration file /root/.gtkrc-2.0-kde-kde4 with Kate, add the following line (...) to the very bottom and save the changes

gtk-icon-theme-name="gnome-brave"

Now, logout from your KDE session and login again. Start some GTK-apps and feel more comfortable :-)

[Virchanza]

Nice!

Great work!

I don't look like I'm using Windows 3.11 anymore!

This definitely needs to be built into the BT4 Final edition.

[Spider Jerusalem]

Very nice, thanks!

[orange]

Community,

I'll now show you how to integrate GTK-apps almost perfectly into the KDE3 desktop environment. For this purpose (and in addition to yesterday's presented QTCurve/gnome-brave-icon-theme solution), I created a modified version of the BT4 default icon-theme that is conform with the FSF icon naming specification. If you follow this tutorial, you'll end up with nearly native-looking GTK-apps (qt-theme AND icon-theme). So, let's get started:

1st Step: Install QTCurve and related packages

# apt-get install gtk2-engines-qtcurve kde-style-qtcurve kde-style-qtcurve-kde3 kdelibs4c2a qtcurve-kde3 gtk-qt-engine-kde3

2nd Step: Navigate to Settings - Appearance & Themes - GTK Styles and Fonts from your KDE menu, select "Use another style: QTCurve" from the Dialog under "GTK Styles" and click "Apply"

3rd Step: Open the configuration file /root/.gtkrc-2.0-kde-kde4 with Kate, add the following line (...) to the very bottom and save the changes

gtk-icon-theme-name="nuvoX_0.7"

4th Step: Download my modified nuvoX icon-theme, install it and remove the default BT4 nuvoX icon-teme

EDIT: The download of my modified nuvoX icon-theme produced an unexpected HUGE traffic the last days. Thanks to Virchanza, there's an alternative download source available as of today - please balance between these two sources

# wget http://virjacode.com/projects/beefup/dloads/nuvoX_0.7.tar.gz

# wget http://piranha.klashed.net/private/BT4-pre-final/nuvoX/nuvoX_0.7.tar.gz
# tar -C /usr/share/icons/ -xzf nuvoX_0.7.tar.gz
# rm -rf /root/.kde3/share/icons/nuvoX_0.7

Now, just restart KDE and enjoy! Let me know if you encounter any issues.

PS: It might be needed to re-select the nuvoX 0.7.1 icon-theme from the Dialog "KMenu - Settings - Appearance & Themes - Icons" and Click "Apply" before restarting KDE.

[Virchanza]

How come the icons are 77 megabytes?! :O

I'm gonna have to leave them downloading overnight. . .

[orange]

How come the icons are 77 megabytes?!

I'm sorry for that, but even the default nuvoX icon-theme in BT4 pre-final is 77MB large (extracted size). My modified set is just ~4MB larger.

[freemymind]

I like this look much better! Thanks you for sharing this with us. Great work.

[Virchanza]

I'm sorry for that, but even the default nuvoX icon-theme in BT4 pre-final is 77MB large (extracted size). My modified set is just ~4MB larger.

I remember when I was a kid I used to collect icons... (yeah kids do strange things)... I had about a thousand of them stored on a 3.5 inch floppy.

When did icons become so big? :-O

[orange]

Community,

I'd like to ask if some community member would be able/willing to host, i.e. mirror, my modified nuvoX icon-theme and support me in providing it to the community. I encounter unexpected HUGE traffic at the server since I uploaded this. Creating a torrent and seeding until a critical mass is reached would also be sufficient.

In case you'd be able/willing to support me, the tarball we're talking about is at http://piranha.klashed.net/private/B...voX_0.7.tar.gz

Thanks a lot in advance,
orange

[Virchanza]

I'm hosting the icons here:

http://virjacode.com/projects/beefup...voX_0.7.tar.gz