A few "gtk without gnome" desktop questions

Sadako · Last edited by Sadako on Sat May 28, 2005 7:47 pm; edited 6 times in total

I used to use gnome when I started using linux, but I don't particularly lke the way gnome and other DE's work, and have been using enlightenment for months. I still have gnome-light installed, but I rarely use any of the apps included. I've recompiled everything but ximian openoffice with the gnome use flag unset. I don't want to use gnome-settings-daemon, gconfd-2, or anything simular, but I can't seem to figure out how to do certain things without them;

1: How do you specify an icon theme to be used for all gtk apps, for stuff like file open dialogs? In bmp and simular apps, the dialogs use the default theme, which I find quite ugly. I know it's been brought up in the forums before, but I haven't seen a suggestion that works.

[Edit #1; SOLVED, take a look at forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-273187.html, all credit to DaSch]

[Edit #3; Thorium pointed out another method that works, place this in ~/.gtkrc-2.0; gtk-icon-theme-name = "<themename>"

2: Gnome gives you an option to disable tearaway menus and such which make the apps appear cleaner, how can you do the same without gnome? Or can you at all?

[Edit #2; Probably not doable, look at my third post for why]

3: Lastly, firefox always starts gconfd-2, even though I've compiled it without the gnome use flag, and "emerge -pve mozilla-firefox" does not list gnome-base/gconf as a dependency. I've had a look at the mozilla-launcher script, but can't find anything relevant. Anyone know how to stop this?[/i]

[Edit #4; SOLVED, forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-342417.html, many thanks to matroskin]
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Hikaru79 · Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:23 am Post subject:

Bumping just because I'd like to know the answer to this too :oops:

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mark_alec · Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 8:04 am Post subject:

Why not try xfce4. It has its own configuration utilities and is gtk2 based.

ehud · n00b Joined: 15 May 2004 Posts: 69 Location: Tel Aviv

I've tried to do the same with e17:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-330810-start-0-postdays-0-postorder-asc-highlight-lightweight.html

To control the gtk themes without gnome, use gtk-chtheme:

Sadako · Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 2:41 pm Post subject:

mark_alec;
I've tried xfce4, and even though it is a little lighter than gnome-light, I still didn't like it much. I'm trying the get a fairly minimalistic desktop, and something that bears no resemblance to windows. I don't really want any of the toolbars or panels the different DE's provide, nor do I want icons on the desktop. I'm really happy with just enlightenment's pager and iconbox, the latter of which I rarely even use. Also, I'm trying to accomplish everything in my first post without any kind of deamons running in the background, if possible.

ehud;
I use both gtk-chtheme and gtk-theme-switch (which has an earlier version for gtk+ 1 themes), but neither seem to be capable of doing what I'm looking for. If it's doable it's probably as simple as changing a value or two in a config file somewhere, but I can't find any info on where.

The firefox/gconfd-2 thing; I know firefox itself tries to fit in with gnome if it finds it on your system, but I want try to stop it from loading when I'm not using gnome, which is always. Again, I'm sure there must be an option hidden away in a config file somewhere.

Anyway, thanks for the replies. I'm going to keep looking, maybe take a peep at gnome daemons' source files to see how they do what they do.
Like I'll really be able to make any sense of it. :roll:

But anyway.
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Wi1d · Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:41 pm Post subject:

I'm trying to do something similiar and have a question. What package is "/usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon" in? Could someone do a "qpkg -f /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon" if you have it so I don't have to install all of gnome?

DaSch · Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:56 pm Post subject:

maybe you are looking for this?

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-273187-highlight-.html
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effloresce · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Jan 2005 Posts: 109

Hm, does that work under openbox as well?

Sadako · Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 9:24 pm Post subject:

effloresce · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Jan 2005 Posts: 109

Am I supposed to have an iconrc file within the icon folder? I can't find one for gnant (gant? I guess)

Sadako · Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 6:00 pm Post subject:

effloresce;
I looked in all the directories in /usr/share/icons, and only found an iconrc file within the Rodent theme directory, the one used in the link DaSch provided.

There were a number of iconrc's within the gtk-2.0 directories for certain themes within /usr/share/themes, but none of these worked for me.

However, if you have the rodent iconrc file, you shuld be able to use it as a template to use whatever icons you want. t'll just take a little work.
I'm going to try this in about a week when I have more free time.
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Thorium · n00b Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 22

Another way to set icon themes for gtk apps is to add the following to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (or ~/.gtkrc.mine if you are using a gtk theme manager like gtk-chtheme):

matroskin · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 214

I've wrote a small howto explaining how to stop firefox from using gconf
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-342417.html

gwolf · Guru Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 374 Location: Estonia

effloresce · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Jan 2005 Posts: 109

Sadako · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 11:01 pm Post subject:

First off;
Thorium - thanks, your method works too, but with different results than the method DaSch pointed out.
Using (in /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc)

Sadako · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 11:10 pm Post subject:

matroskin;

Perfect!

Followed your instructions to the letter (but with a different firefox install directory), and no more gconfd-2.
I have absolutely no idea how this works, but it does, so I'm happy.

Thank you!

For others trying this, the install directory for me was

matroskin · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 214

Sadako · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject:

Yeah, just tried firefox in a terminal (easier than emerging strace, we're not all programmers you know :wink:

) and got

gwolf · Guru Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 374 Location: Estonia

Hello again!

I used the ideas from this thread about changing the icon theme for gtk apps, and here's an overview about what I've found out, hopefully this saves some hours of work for somebody.

1. I did not have any icon set that has iconrc file, so I installed gnome-themes-extras, which had 5-6 themes that included iconrc files, but the location was slightly different than that mentioned by DaSch: e.g., to use Nuvola icons, I wrote
include "/usr/share/themes/Nuvola/gtk-2.0/iconrc" into ~/.gtkrc-2.0. And this works nicely, although not all icons are changed.

2. Next I tried the idea by Thorium, and wrote gtk-icon-theme-name = "Nuvola" into ~/.gtkrc-2.0 as well. Using the both lines at the same time gave the best look, since they seem to apply to (atleast somewhat) different places (as Hopeless already said).

3. So, everything was almost ok, but since I am quite used to Slick icons (am using KDE), I wanted to get the same look for gtk apps too. I am also using gtk-qt-engine, which allows gtk apps to use the same widgets that I am using in qt apps. But yesterday I (almost accidentally) found out that gtk-qt-engine actually provides something like iconrc as well (look inside ~/.gtk_qt_engine_rc), but it did not work for me so far, because of some missing commas in script. So I ran beep-media-player from console, got error messages similar to