GTK apps appearance under KDE

[Harald Sitter]

On Tuesday 16 September 2008 10:33:55 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Gordon Schulz <gordon.schulz at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:35, Richard S. Crawford <rscrawford at mossroot.com> 
wrote:
> >> I seem to have lost the ability to style my GTK applications (e.g.
> >> Firefox) with my KDE look. I used to be able to go to System Settings ->
> >> Appearance, and there'd be an option for GTK applications. That option
> >> is gone now, and now my GTK applications look awful.
> >
> > Is gtk-qt-engine still installed?
>
> I had the same problem here. I fixed it by going to systemsettings ->
> appereance -> GTK Styles and Fonts and setting it to "use my KDE style
> in GTK applications". Before that it was set to "use another Style"
> and the dropdown was empty. I am pretty sure it was not empty before
> but I am not sure what I had set it to.
>
> gtk-qt-engine is installed as well as gtk-qt-engine-kde4.

You probably have to do as described by Lydia ... at least in KDE 4.

gtk-qt-engine from the KDE 4 PPA is the same as -kde4, so you won't be able to 
theme properly in KDE 3 anymore.

The reason is that we have to force a switch to the Qt 4 version of gtk-qt-
engine, otherwise flash in KDE 4's Konqueror is going down in no time. We came 
to the decision that ugly GTK in KDE 3 is better than a crashy konqueror in 
KDE 4.

You can however add a file named '/etc/apt/preferences' with the following 
content:
Package: gtk-qt-engine gtk-qt-engine-kde4
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: 1001

This will give the official packages higher priority than the PPA ones and 
prevent an upgrade. It will also downgrade the package to the official version 
in case you already upgraded.

I'd like to note that you should really stick with the broken GTK theming in 
KDE 3 if you use Konqueror 4.
Also, if you are using KDE 3 and are affacted, you shouldn't leave unused 
repositories in your sources list (we made this decision partly based on the 
assumption that people who constantly have the KDE 4 PPA in the sources list, 
are actually using KDE 4).

Regards,
Harald