[ubuntu-art] Parametrisable colors for window borders, system icons and controls

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen]

On 04/02/2008, Kenneth Wimer <kwwii at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Friday 01 February 2008 16:04:53 François Degrave wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I think a new theme which would provide Ubuntu a fresher look would be
> > really useful. However, orange - and brown - are not always the colors
> > people prefer, and even if it was the case, most people like to change
> > the look of the system after a while.
> >
> > I would suggest the whole theme should be parametrisable. The user
> > should be able to choose (within 3 clicks...) not only the color of the
> > window borders, but also the color of the system icons and controls.
>
> I think that this is a very interesting idea but it would be quite a feat to
> pull off, not to mention it being so late in the cycle. I would suggest
> adding this as a blueprint for hardy+1. We'd need more than artwork to
> accomplish this so having things well planned and defined will make it much
> more likely to happen.
>
> > For the moment, the problem is that in order to change the look of the
> > system, the user has to choose another theme than Human (which is the
> > most clean one, but not parametrisable), and then search the internet
> > for icon themes that would match his desires, when parametrisable colors
> > for windows, system icons and controls would make that task easy as can be.
> >

Regarding changing the colors of the window borders, I actually did a
patch to gnome-appearance-applet to allow color parametrization of the
window frames, see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=498854.
It is simple an non-intrusive.

It adds an extra "Window frame" button to the Colors tab in the theme
customization dialog, and allows themes to control
@window_{fg,bg}_color in their gtkrc files.

The problem is that the colors need also be respected in the metacity
themes, so it is not guaranteed to work on all themes. Most will work
though.

The patch was rejected because it was "bloat". I fail to see how it is
more bloated than allowing to change the colors of the tooltips. Go
figure.

Maybe if people from ubuntu-art start commenting on that bug... Some
good old lobbying :-)

Cheers,
Mikkel