How to edit Icewm themes with mtPaint

[cagliostro]

I have been using mtpaint to edit icewm themes. This took me a while to figure out, but mtpaint is actually quite powerful. Here is some easy stuff you can do, how to do a simple edit.

Often the Close and Maximize title buttons are too close together, and I will take IceQua as an example. The colored buttons are right next to each other. So I opened up closeA.xpm in mtpaint. Increase the zoom by 800 or 1200.

The area on the left needs to be expanded. The easier way to do this is to click "Image" and "Flip Horizontally." Now, also under "Image," click on "Resize Canvas." When presented with the resize options be sure to uncheck "Fix Aspect Ratio": otherwise when you change the width the height will also change. Now enter a new width, making it at least 3 pixels larger than previously. The image will increase to the right by 3 pixels (the reason for initially flipping the image horizontally). The new area will be transparent. At this point you can again chose "Flip Horizontally" to get the icon image back the way it is supposed to be, with the new area on the left.

Now chose "Make Selection", which is the big red square. It will probably already be highlighted. Just to the left of the colored button in the image mark out a selection that is one pixel wide, and the entire height of the image long. You need to move this over to fill in the new blank area. To do this hit copy (Ctrl-C), then paste (Ctrl-K). You see the pasted selection outlined in blue. You can move this about. Move it over the new area, and when it is correctly positioned hit the right mouse button. This will imprint the selection onto the image. Move the selection aside and you will see that this is so. Move the selection again, hitting the right mouse button to imprint it, and again, and you have filled in the 3-pixel wide new area. To remove the outlined selection, when no longer needed, just hit the <Esc> key. Now save the new xpm icon.

If you have done closeA.xpm, you now need to repeat everything with closeI.xpm, so icewm will display the title buttons properly. It takes a lot longer to describe all this than it actually takes to do it.

Sometimes you find good start buttons in icewm themes, but they aren't the right color. In mtpaint chose "Effects" and "Transform colour" and you can play around with the sliders to get the effect you want.

I have had problems with a few start buttons refusing to open in mtpaint. The same has happened when I tried to edit the title buttons in KristallAqua: mtpaint says "unable to open file." I haven't figured out what is wrong with the .xpm icons (too many colors?).

I tried to use the GIMP to edit them. I think after about four or five months I might be able to manage such a simple task with the GIMP. Instead I used the GIMP to save the .xpm icons as .png icons. Now I can edit them in mtpaint.

My question is, how do I transform the .png icons back to .xpm icons? I read somewhere about doing this, but now can't remember what was said. The GIMP doesn't seem to want to save .png icons as .xpm. Maybe I'm not doing it right. Is there some built-in Linux utility that will convert .png to .xpm?

[HairyWill]

mtpaint
image menu
convert to RGB
convert to indexed

Depending on which sort your image is you will be able to save in different formats. Some formats can do both. XPM is an indexed format.

[cagliostro]

Just tried it: that did the trick. Thanks!

In mtpaint, loaded CloseA.png.
Clicked on "Image," "convert to indexed."

(gave a list of choices I didn't really understand, so left things at default)

Then clicked on "save as". Before gave me a list of four choices: PNG, BMP, TIFF, etc. Now gave me a list of five choices, the last being XPM. Saved the icon as XPM. I can now reload it into mtpaint.

I'm glad to know this.

[wjaguar]

I have had problems with a few start buttons refusing to open in mtpaint. The same has happened when I tried to edit the title buttons in KristallAqua: mtpaint says "unable to open file." I haven't figured out what is wrong with the .xpm icons (too many colors?).

Could you send a couple examples of such files to me (wjaguar@users.sourceforge.net)? It is quite hard to fix this problem (whatever it is) without me being able to reproduce it.

-= Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

[cagliostro]

Sent 10 sample icons that won't open in mtpaint.

Hope this helps.