[kubuntu-devel] QtCurve and Hardy

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 08:27:51PM +0000, Craig Drummond wrote:
> I stumbled upon some KUbuntu IRC logs, that seemed to indicate that
> Hardy will use QtCurve as the default KDE theme. If I'm wrong, then
> just ignore the rest of this email.
> I also noticed, however, that Hardy will not use QtCurve's Gtk2
> engine, preferring to style Gtk2 apps via the Qt engine. Nothing
> against the Qt engine - its a fantastic idea. But, QtCurve doesn't look
> that great when done this way - certainly nowhere near as good as its
> native Gtk2 port. Some visible differences between QtCurve via Qt
> engine, and native QtCurve Gtk theme:
>   1. Menubar items are not correctly coloured when selected. This
>      seems to be because the Qt engine assumes the KDE style is
>      plastik like (so has dark text for slected menubar items).
>   2. Popup menus are not recoloured.
>   3. Sliders are chopped off at the bottom.
>   4. Entry fields for spin widgets are not drawn correctly - they
>      should only be
>  rounded on the left.
>   5. Scrollbar buttons don't depress when clicked on.
>   6. Tabs are not drawn correctly - see kino for an example of
>      really bad tabs. (This affects all themes via the Qt engine).
>   7. Checkboxes in menus are drawn as a '-'
>   8. Frames are not rounded
> ...and there are probably quite a few others. The following
> screenshots show the difference when running gimp:

Hi Craig, I've been meaning to contact you, thanks for e-mailing.

We just switched to QtCurve before the beta, so it's quite a last
minute thing.  

gtk-qtcurve is mostly a developer time issue.  To get gtk-qtcurve in
someone would need to write a main inclusion report, get it reviewed
and into main, have the kubuntu-default-settings scripts that chose
the gtk theme altered and have it all tested in the next week or so.
I don't know if anyone has the time for that currently (Stefan Skotte
was the driver for qtcurve, so it would probably be up to him finding time).

> It is also possible
>  to give QtCurve (all 3 variants) default
> settings by copying qtcurvestylerc to /etc/qt (or /etc/qt3,
> or /etc/qt4). You can create this file by exporing your current
> settings from the KDE3 or KDE4 style's config dialog. (e.g.
> export your settings to ~/Wibble.qtcurve, then simply
> cp ~/Wibble.qtcurve to /etc/qt/qtcurvestylerc) QtCurve will
> read this file before reading a users settings - and will use
> these as the defaults. So there is no need to copy a
> qtcurvestylerc to a user's ~/.config when starting KDE.

That doesn't seem to be the case with our version (0.55.2), thus far
I've been patching the sources directly to change default settings.

Change I've made are

-    opts->toolbarAppearance=APPEARANCE_GRADIENT;
+    opts->toolbarAppearance=APPEARANCE_FLAT;
-    opts->shadeMenubars=SHADE_DARKEN;
+    opts->shadeMenubars=SHADE_NONE;

I find this makes the menus/toolbars less distracting.

I think I'll also set the default button to have the thin black
border, the thick one is too distracting.  I prefer the light grey
border of polyester though.

Thanks for a great theme.

Jonathan