customizing and managing iceWM themes

[Anonymous]

For starters, here’s a more-or-less “stock answer” in response to the FAQ “How can I install an additional iceWM theme?”

Within your /home/username/.icewm folder, there should be a subfolder named “themes”.
If that subdirectory is not already present, create it.

Inside the themes folder, copy (paste) the subdirectory containing files of the themeset you want to customize.
-=-
FOR EXAMPLE, copied from /usr/share/icewm/themes/quiescent-large
or
extracted from a downloaded archive file, retrieved from
https://www.opendesktop.org/browse/cat/142/

To switch to the newly installed theme, go to the IceWM menu }} Settings }} Themes, and then select your theme.
You should immediately see your newly-added theme in action.

——————————————————

The above instructions are suitable for someone who just wants to INSTALL a readymade theme.
In case it isn’t obvious, they wind up with an installed theme that is only accessible by the user(account) who installed it.

Anyone who, in a local sysadmin role, intends to install (and or customize) globally-available iceWM themes
and/or perform other global default configuration customizations, bear in mind:

1)
In the debian (antiX) implementation of icewm, the path /usr/local/share/icewm/ does not exist.
If you were to create that path on your system, it would not be sourced (would be ignored).
You can check this by typing, in terminal
icewm –directories (i.e. “icewm dash dash directories”)

2)
Any files residing in the path /usr/share/* (e.g. /usr/share/icewm/themes/) are subject to being overwritten during package upgrade operations.

3)
Several manpages related to to icewm are preinstalled.
You can discover whichall are available by typing, in terminal:
apropos icewm
You should read or at least skim through this provided onboard documentation.
While viewing a manpage, pressing / (forward slash character) activates the search-in-page prompt.
While searching, pressing “n” key jumps (scrolls) to next match; “p” jumps to previous match.

4)
By launching synaptic package manager (and its preferences are set to “show package properties in main window”), you can discover where the various package-installed files reside within the filesystem.

The double-headed blue arrow here is just calling attention to the fact that you can click on the column headers to “sort by”

5)
Each time a new user account is created on the system, any files that you (sysadmin) have placed in /etc/skel/
( e.g. /etc/skel/.icewm/themes/* ) will be copied into the user’s newly-created home directory.

6)
Any icewm themes that you (sysadmin) place in /usr/share/icewm/themes/* will be immediately available to all user accounts on the system… but (reiterating point #2) are subject to being overwritten during package upgrade operations.

[Anonymous]

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This post is about understanding the iceWM theming mechanics.

lean-n-mean (avoiding redundant copies of preinstalled themefiles)
by default (as populated from /etc/skel/) the antiX user’s home directory doesn’t contain copies of any “local, just for my user” iceWM themes.

~/.icewm/theme
Using geany to view content of this file, we can note that each time a new theme is selected via menu
“content has changed. Reload?”
iceWM writes the name of the newly-selected theme to top line of the file
atop outcommented lines reflecting the history of previous selections.
On my system, right at this moment, the topmost line shows

Theme=”quiescent-large/default.theme”

Confusingly, within each iceWM themeset is a same-named “default.theme” file.
We can avoid redundantly editing specific details within each of these
by specifying any desired across-the-board details within a “prefoverride” file.

IceWM uses the following configuration files:

~/.icewm/theme
Currently selected theme

~/.icewm/preferences
General settings – paths, colors, fonts…

~/.icewm/prefoverride
Settings that will override details specified within individual themes.

~/.icewm/menu
Menu of startable applications. Usually customized by the user.

~/.icewm/programs
Automatically generated menu of startable applications
I do not regularly use icewm & haven’t confirmed, but AFAIK…
antiX uses, instead ~/.icewm/startup

~/.icewm/winoptions
Application window options

~/.icewm/keys
Global keybindings to launch applications (not window manager related)

~/.icewm/toolbar
Quick launch application icons on the taskbar.

Also, on antiX systems:

~/.icewm/startup
shell script, called by desktop-session, where we can source custom scripts and instruct autostart of selected programs

[Member oops]

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5)
Each time a new user account is created on the system, any files that you (sysadmin) have placed in /etc/skel/
( e.g. /etc/skel/.icewm/themes/* ) will be copied into the user’s newly-created home directory.

FI: Into MX, the ability to reload /etc/skel/* for an existing user account exist. (can be a solution?)

[Member kaye]

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Hi skidoo, is there any way to change the color of the taskbar? I’m using space-icewm right now. The default taskbar has a grayish or silver with gradient effect. Any way to modify it? Change the color? Or make the entire taskbar transparent such that only the Menu icon, sound icon, time, etc are visible.

By the way, I’m not sure about this but the code ColorDefaultTaskBar=”” does not seem to be included in Preferences, I had to put that line in.

I changed it to ColorDefaultTaskBar=”rgb:00/ff/00″ but nothing happenend.

Adding this line does not do anything either.

I’m editing the Preferences located in /home/user/.icewm , which is the same as the one in Control Centre, I think.

Thank you!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by kaye.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by kaye.

[Anonymous]

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Is there any way to change the color of the taskbar?

Yes, there is.

… the code … does not seem to be included in Preferences, I had to put that line in.
I changed it to … but nothing happenend.
Adding this line does not do anything either.

Surprised?

I explained you already why it doesn’t work and where to look, if you wanna change it.
The answer is in that recent thread, where you asked that question for the first time.

[Member kaye]

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Hello noClue, I read your reply in my thread but I’m not sure what to do, sorry.

You said,

you can’t see the changes you did, because you did the changes on a default theme itself (which is under the one you can see) but, not in the theme you’re currently using (which is above; the colour scheme of the theme is covering the default which you’re editing).

but I’ve never used a different theme via Menu -> Themes. I tried a different theme earlier and then went back to the default theme but still no changes.

Also, I don’t see any code in the icewm to change the menu icon. Can I have it display a customized text, like “Not Windows” ?

Thank you.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by kaye.

[Anonymous]

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Learning is a process which is done step by step.

If you want to ‘play theming’, it’s crucial — there are very little ‘manuals’ or ‘step-by-step how-to’s’.

My point is to get you to SEE the things first, then THINK about the problem and then take the right approach to SOLVE it.

In the first part, you noticed one important thing:

(* I assume you wear trousers and underwear and they are both white colored.)

You expect to see your trousers in some color (any other than white, obviously) but, you keep insisting on recoloring your underwear instead and afterwards you wonder, why can’t you see any change in the color of your trousers. Layers …

You’ve learned that changing the preferences of IceWM has no effect to the theme (== theme preferences) you’re using.

You also learned that you need to select (and set ‘active’) one theme first, to be able to see some changes.

The next step:

Download both themes from the attachment and put them inside your ‘home’ directory.

/home/USERNAME/.icewm/themes/FOLDER_WITH_YOUR_THEME_HERE

Set them as active and examine carefully how they look — one can immediately say how to rework them if one can notice some important details.

Please compare the both working IceWM themes and later, try to change the color of the taskbar only and tell me what did you notice.

Tipp 1: Both of those themes are built in a different manner. Changing colors for both works but, each in another way.

Tipp 2: What about gradients? Can one write ColorDefaultTaskBar=”rgb:00/ff/00″ and get gradient at all?

P.S.
DON’T bother with transparency for the moment (see screenshot).

P.P.S.
The same screenshot hides one very valuable clue for you — if you didn’t notice it on your own by now.

[Anonymous]

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Not yet available in the v1.38 & v1.42 versions of icewm-common package from antiX repos,
the v1.43 icewm-common package from debian buster repository provides an additional “icewm-preferences” manpage which describes each of the various preferences.

icewm-common/icewm-preferences.5.en.html

v——– manpages currently available in antiX (preinstalled, from icewm-common pkg)
icewm
icewmbg
icewmhint
icewmtray
icewm-menu-fdo

v——– new manpages added in v1.43
icewm-menu-xrandr
icewm-session
icewm-set-gnomewm
icewm-env
icewm-focus_mode
icewm-keys
icewm-menu
icewm-preferences
icewm-prefoverride
icewm-programs
icewm-shutdown
icewm-startup
icewm-theme
icewm-toolbar
icewm-winoptions
ref: https://packages.debian.org/buster/amd64/icewm-common/filelist

[Member kaye]

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noClue I will try it, thanks a bunch!

[Anonymous]

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When you’re done with it, we’ll go to the next part.
I just prepared the needed screenshots.
😉

[Member kaye]

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Hey noClue, I don’t know if what I did is what you were expecting, but here it is:

1. I downloaded your test-theme, put the folder in /usr/share/icewm/themes ,

2. Inside the test-theme folder, there is another folder called taskbar, and inside the taskbar folder is a taskbarbg.xpm

3. I edited taskbarbg.xpm with GIMP. Turned the color to orange with gradient. Saved it.

4. Edited the file /home/user/.icewm/theme by adding the line: Theme=”test-theme/default.theme” (without the # to activate it)

5. Menu -> Logout -> Restart Session

6. The result is the attached file.

By the way, pressing the Prt Sc button on my laptop keyboard does nothing. That is why I used GIMP to take the screen-shot, as can be seen in the attached file.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by kaye.

Attachments:

1. 

   screenshot.png
   

[Member oops]

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… A question:
Is it possible to easily increase the resizing space for the windows in iceWM (like here for XFCE4, xfwm4) ?
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=479776#p479776

[Anonymous]

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[Member oops]

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… Thank you skidoo.

[Anonymous]

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Hey noClue, I don’t know if what I did is what you were expecting …

What I was expecting was that you answer my question — did you notice the difference between those two themes?

Basically, we have two different kinds of IceWM themes and two different approaches to theming (even if they both overlap at some points).

1. ‘Classic’ themes (which use gradients)

Since one can’t write the gradients as RGB code (ColorDefaultTaskBar=”rgb:00/ff/00″), one needs some kind of ‘trick’ to implement them in IceWM.

That’s why you’ve got the color codes in the description files, where you can change the values and can’t see any changes.

Those colors are under the image which is atop and are necessary to get those gradients in themes.

2. ‘Modern’ themes (‘flat’ themes)

Since there are no gradients, there’s no need to overlap them with images.

Changing color codes, changes the theme colors immediately.

P.S.
Congratulations!
You learned how to change the color of your trousers. 🙂

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