NewDay-theme: Some ergonomic fixes for the Antix default theme

[Member fladd]

Hi there,

I have mentioned in the past that the default theme has some unfortunate choices with respect to ergonomics. I made an attempt to fix those.

The changes are:
– active window is highlighted with blue title bar
– visibility of active window in task bar has been improved (either with a blue strip at the top as default, or by being entirely blue as an alternative)
– title bar buttons have been cleaned up and are now better aligned
– title bar now scales with the size of theme (i.e. it gets smaller for the “small” variant, and larger for the “large” and “huge” variants)

If I find the time, I might still work on a small script to change the accent colour from blue to a user defined colour.

[Member fladd]

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Apparently I cannot upload the file here for some reason. Here is another link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C8R_a7KceqEwaop5YjGuq70UbMGKHf_f/view?usp=sharing

[Member fladd]

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Alright, I made some changes to the theme to also have the start menu button as well as the workspace button foreground and background follow the accent color.

I also created a Python script to create a custom version of the theme:

Basically, what it does is to set a custom accent color (window title bar, active window in taskbar, workspace button background and foreground, start menu button, selected menu item) for a certain variant of the theme (small, medium, large, huge; default=medium), takes care of a matching foreground color (i.e. switches from white to black if the accent color is too bright) and allows for having alternative icons for desktop button icon (the default icewm icon), start button icon (a thicker outline for better visibility) and active taskbar button icon (fully colored in accent color).

Call it with the –help option to see how to use it and all its functionality.

Here is an example of what a custom version of the theme could look like:

I also renamed the theme to “NewDay”, since it can be any new color now.

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hoOAWy8qDE2CwOfhBQlqQSzVw_lCHq0E/view?usp=sharing

Please test (especially the script). If everything works, I will upload it to themes.ice-wm.org.

@anticapitalista: I am not sure if you are interested, but I think it would be great if this could be included in Antix 23!

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Thanks.
I have added the themes to icewm-themes-antix

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member fladd]

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Update:
– fix for menu button in window titlebar when showing application icon
– fix for highlight color in task switcher and search box
– new option -a in script for showing application icon in window titlebar
– new option -l in script for choosing look (flat or 3d)

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bNyQKyVH3HxTxgvaw-lQA3zxTBlzkCGc/view?usp=sharing

Thanks @anticapitalista for including the theme and script! What is the best way for me to have updates (this one, but also future ones) included? I found a GitHub and a GitLab repository with the name “icewm-themes-antix”, but those have not received updates in a while, so I assume they are old ones? Could you point me to the current one maybe?

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by fladd.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by fladd.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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@fladd – I updated the Gitlab repo to include your latest.

https://gitlab.com/antiX-Linux/icewm-themes-antix

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member marcelocripe]

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Thanks a lot fladd for these new themes and thanks also to anticapitalista for so promptly adding these themes to antiX.
I want to see someone saying that antiX could be “a little prettier”.
With the various themes created by BobC, PPC, you and the other participants in this community, antiX will have beautiful themes available to users. We’ll just need to teach newbies how to find them by clicking on the antiX menu, scrolling through three menus/submenus with the cursor and clicking on the theme name.

Thank you very much!

– – – – –

Muito obrigado fladd por estes novos temas e agradeço também o anticapitalista por tão prontamente adicionar estes temas ao antiX.
Eu quero ver alguém dizendo que o antiX poderia ser “um pouco mais bonito”.
Com os vários temas criados pelo BobC, PPC, você e os outros participantes desta comunidade, o antiX terá lindos temas a disposição dos usuários. Nós precisaremos apenas ensinar os novatos como encontrá-los com um cliqueno menu do antiX, percorrer três menus/submenus com o cursor e clicar sobre o nome do tema.

Muito obrigado!

[Member blur13]

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This is really good, thank you!

[Member blur13]

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Another “ergonomic” fix is to set QuickSwitchRaiseCandidate=1 in preferences

This will raise windows while cycling through them in Alt-Tab. Very useful when having multiple full screen windows of eg a terminal where the names in the quickswitch window is just the terminal name.

[Member fladd]

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Update:
– various fixes
– new option for light mode
– updated customization script

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UL2MzDwQ9actT9P5GnbjR2XbCQRByUih/view?usp=sharing

@anticapitalista: Thanks for the link. I created a merge request for the current changes.

@blur13: Good point, but not a theme-specific setting, right?

[Member blur13]

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Got this running the script in .icewm/themes/ directory
This is on antix 19 (ie debian 10 buster)

 python3 newday_custom.py -c 103296 -m light  -l 3d -a -s
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "newday_custom.py", line 91, in <module>
    shutil.copytree(source_dir, output_dir, dirs_exist_ok=True)
TypeError: copytree() got an unexpected keyword argument 'dirs_exist_ok'

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 5 days ago by blur13.

[Member fladd]

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blur13 wrote:

Got this running the script in .icewm/themes/ directory
This is on antix 19 (ie debian 10 buster)

 python3 newday_custom.py -c 103296 -m light  -l 3d -a -s
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "newday_custom.py", line 91, in <module>
    shutil.copytree(source_dir, output_dir, dirs_exist_ok=True)
TypeError: copytree() got an unexpected keyword argument 'dirs_exist_ok'

Yeah, the script will only work with Python >= 3.8.

[Member fladd]

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Update:
– better algorithm for automatically setting text color
– better colors for workspace button
– new desktop icon
– new styles for active task bar
– more options in the customization script
– several smaller fixes

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZLmh1fpTKq-zOSAHk7zgJiWwvLHiNRCE/view?usp=sharing

@anticapitalista: Can the title of this thread be changed to reflect the new theme name?

• This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by fladd.

[Member fladd]

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Update:
– fixed default desktop icon back to “windows”
– added inverted versions of start menu icons

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tT8K8rgVuafq_TEtN4cMGdo0GErp-K7A/view?usp=sharing

Another example of a custom version:

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