Cairo dock, Unity, and GTK3 together as an Ubuntustudio UI

[Luke Kuhn]

I am using this UI every day, in both video and audio editing as well as routine web use. I had to do a lot of work throughout the Natty cycle to get this up and running. I have attached screenshots and my modified Ubuntustudio theme. (assuming hotmail doesn't refuse to send them after saving a copy of this in "drafts"
I have used Ubuntustudio with some extra packages, notably kdenlive and avidemux, for combined audio/photo/video work since 2008, usually using alpha releases on multiple partitions and debugging as I go.  Any time UI changes came along that I didn't like, I rolled them back without having to roll back packages, as I liked what I had been using back to Hardy. Beginning with Lucid and the GNOME 3 discussions, it seemed this was about to get a lot harder. 
 In the Natty release cycle, I have played with GNOME3 and Unity both, and like most Ubuntustudio users found the menus in them to be pretty but nearly useless.  I played with gnome-shell back to Lucid, originally finding it a delightful toy, but one that slowed down the work due to the menus.
Originally Unity was seriously ugly as well on my desktop, mismatching my background and the Ubuntustudio icons. When  it was made to respect gtk themes and accept any icons, it get pretty but had one showstopper bug: black text on the black panel. To render text in white on the Unity panel, the Ubuntustudio-look package needed a single line added to /usr/share/themes/UbuntuStudio/gtk-2.0/gtkrc , so it would write white text on the black panel image in Unity:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntustudio-look/+bug/741331
Here is the edited section of gtkrc:
style "murrine-panel"
{
 bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "panel/panel.png"
        text[NORMAL] = @selected_fg_color
}
Now Untiy looks great, but still no Ubuntustudio menus. I finally discovered Cairo-dock while looking for an alternative to Docky. Cairo-dock started out buggy but now gets along fine with xv video applications-and features whatever main menus that the GNOME panel displays as a dock widget. Configure the widget to use the Ubuntustudio button, and you have a full Ubuntustudio menu. I move it to the left side of the dock. If you have opengl bugs or xv bugs while using cairo-dock, setting it to use cairo and not opengl for rendering usually solves the problem. For a future UI using cairo-dock, it would be necessary to maintain this menu code, but hopefully not the rest of GNOME2. I have even  toyed with just using compiz withou Unity with cairo-dock for a minimalist interface,  but prefer to use it with Unity as I like the appearance so long as the now-redundant left launcher side bar(which does not match Ubuntustudio nor my blues and greens) stays hidden.
I have also installed much of GNOME3, gnome-shell included, and can run either Unity or gnome-shell with similar functionality, though I prefer Unity with compiz set manually in gconf to use the compiz cube.  Nautilus 3 is installed, set to manage the desktop and draw icons on it. I regard this as a "lookahead" desktop, figuring Ubuntu will eventually port Unity as well to GNOME3, along with more and more apps going there.
I have rough ported a modified version of the ubuntustudio theme to GTK3. It's a rough port with a bug in displaying some multiple selections, but I'm no GTK expert. Intentional modifications include a turquoise replacing the blue, which can be easily changed back. I also put  -, box, and x images in the panel buttons(otherwise I click the wrong ones), put them on the left in Unity, and put all three back on the right on gnome-shell. The theme looks almost identical in Unity and gnome-shell.
Here's my proposed UI, based on what I am running right now: 
Unity, with the left launcher bar set to autohide by default.  Gnome-shell becomes available in repo once GNOME3 hits the main repos, is in PPA now.
Cairo-dock, the code already exists, the dock is gorgeous with Ubuntustudio icons and highly functional. Ubuntustudio button is icon for main menu widget, positioned on the left. Icon size set to 24 pixels, default panel theme, which is a semitransparent black, rounded at the ends. Consider porting the Ubuntustudio menu bar image to it and extending all the way across. Set to cairo rendering if there are any new reports of opengl bugs on any video drivers/cards. 
Ubuntustudio theme as we've always known it, ported to gtk3 in such a way that gtk2 and gtk3 apps look nearly the same. My buggy, blue-green version is just a starting point and someone who seriously knows gtk3 should rewrite the gtk 3 portions and set the blue-green I use back to ubuntustudio blue.
Consider rewriting plymouth theme to display desktop image right from the start. The existing ubuntustudio progress bar could run on top of it, I use something else.
Use desktop image also for GRUB2 splash. Option: a GUI config tool to set any selected desktop image as Plymouth and GRUB splash as well.
These are just starting points. I actually ran Ubuntustudio in XFCE on an AMD Athlon 500 MHZ audio/photo editing machine back in Summer 2008as Hardy's version of GNOME was too slow for it, so I'm not going to say XFCE is not a valid option either. I'm just suggesting another option for consideration and will continue to develop it myself if nobody else does.
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: UbuntuStudio_Theme_Unity_GTK_2-3_0.2.tar.gz
Type: application/x-gzip
Size: 31803 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0001.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Desktop_Empty.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1719732 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0005.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Desktop_Audacity.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1038997 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0006.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Desktop_Gnome-shell_audacity.png
Type: image/png
Size: 883315 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0007.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Desktop_Kdenlive.png
Type: image/png
Size: 557453 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0008.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Desktop_GTK3-Apps.png
Type: image/png
Size: 529399 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20110422/4c33a145/attachment-0009.png>