How do I change the color theme in Puppy 1.05?

Message

mjg · #1 Post by **mjg** » Wed 28 Sep 2005, 08:13

I'm excited to be playing with the new Puppy, and hope this post doesn't sound negative.

I like the pup on the desktop, but not the background color. Anyone reading reviews of Ubuntu would know that brown/beige is a big turn-off.

I quickly switched to IceWM and changed the background picture.

Unfortunately the beige follows me into Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. How do I remove the beige?

PeterSieg · #2 Post by **PeterSieg** » Wed 28 Sep 2005, 08:19

Change the gtk theme through the menu...

PS

mjg · #3 Post by **mjg** » Wed 28 Sep 2005, 08:26

Thank you! Having changed the theme I'm more comfortable now with the desktop image, which is very good!

All the orange and brown everywhere undermined the image, in my view.

mouldy · #4 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 18:20

Ok, changing gtk theme has no effect or more appropriate to say the gtk=theme changer doesnt work. I changed it to "quiet, light gray pattern", rebooted more than once, and I still have those horrible orange/peach borders/menus. Go back and look and the box for "quiet, light grey pattern" is still checked with no effect.

#5 Post by MU » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 18:39

Hi,

I can't tell you why your themeswitcher does not work.

But you might install another one:
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=2137

Some extended Themes are available here:
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=2160

Mark

mouldy · #6 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 19:15

Ok, my mistake, the theme selector does change some things, but not the borders/menues. I guess thats buried somewhere in jvm, grrr.... Why orange and peach? Yuck.

rarsa · #7 Post by **rarsa** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 19:29

Try These themes Suggestions welcome. 'Yuck' feedbacks welcome, Requests for themes around a color combination welcome (Did you say Ubuntu brown?).

You found the answer to your question:
- GTK themes controls how GTK applications look inside the window.
- JWM themes control how the borders of the windows and the desktop look. Actually I'm thinking of having my JWM themes also switch the GTK theme to a suitable combination)

Regarding the 'Why Peachy?' Whatever color is used it will please some people and will alienate the rest.

Colors are also very culture dependant. Ubuntu has very earthly colors that don't appeal the Northamerican culture. Other cultures may find it a warm and welcoming color.

I agree, My first 'emotional' impression of Ubuntu was degraded by the brown theme. Some people may cringe to the Microsoft Blue.

mouldy · #8 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 20:01

Not liking JWM "themes" at all. XP bright blue and yellow is just as bad as orange and peach. Hurts my eyes and is distracting. Why not just an adjustment where I can pick the two contrasting colors jwm uses from an infinite range. And I can go find the wallpaper I want. Or just do some kind of neutral light gray default and those that want their eyes to hurt from bright and obnoxious color combinations can do so by downloading whatever.

I am strongly thinking of going back to fvwm95 at this point so I dont have to piddle with all this crap. I've already wasted too much time trying to defeat it and do things my way.

rarsa · #9 Post by **rarsa** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 20:10

This starts to sound like the kid that runs to his mother shouting "mom!, mom!, I cannot see!" and mom responds: Well, open your eyes"

Did you try the themes on the link I provided?

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results"

Marv · #10 Post by **Marv** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 20:20

Alas, I too cannot see. I've tried various themes and settings with JWM and have backslid to fvwm95 with my icons from pup 1.03 or so. JWM certainly works well but... Perhaps it's just too much time and too many versions burnishing fvwm95 til it's me or I'm it.

mouldy · #11 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 21:17

I did mess abit with imac-grayn theme. Much easier on eyes though not my favorite colors by any means (is there a color code key to insert different colors since JWM doesnt want to use real color names?), but gave me teeny font. I opened it up and adjusted things including giving it a much nicer image. Then font is big enough but horribly chopped up on the menu. And guess what still have dang orange minimized window showing in tray when I surf.

What fonts can I use with the jwm themes?

And it may sound like little kid complaining to you, but what about the newbie to Puppy who tries it and says YUCK and just moves on cause its too much hassle to change all this stuff.

#12 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:00

Some people may cringe to the Microsoft Blue

I've always thought the blue looked childish and stupid. I like the silver. The green is okay, but too "businesslike" for me. Even this peach stuff is better than XP blue. Yet I continue to see an infinate number of Blue XP clones for window managers. Oh well...

Instead of "backsliding" to fvwm, why not leap ahead to IceWM? Ice has much nicer looking themes, and it's default is good old grey. I haven't tried changing themes in JWM, so I don't know how easy that is, but in IceWM, you just download and run the dotpup, then go to the themes menu at the bottom of the menu. No rebooting necissary either.

FYI, I think the peach is cool, it just isn't the kind of color I like. Sort of how I recognize that certain artworks are extremely good, but I don't really care about them, because they aren't what interests me. I'm not dissing the peach, or asking for it to be changed. It just isn't what pleases me.

mouldy · #13 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:05

Ok got rid of all orange by trial and errror and copying color code from XP theme. Dont really want bright blue for active window, but better than orange. Would be nice to have a chart of the color codes to work with.

mouldy · #14 Post by **mouldy** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:20

Pizzasgood wrote: I haven't tried changing themes in JWM, so I don't know how easy that is

Changing form one theme to another isnt hard in JVM despite my bellyaching. Just I dont like any of their limited number of themes and would rather be able to just be offered a menu and pick a couple colors out of a universal pallette and what font I want and be done with it. Instead I have wasted a bunch of time now trying to modify a theme. I have learned how to use existing theme as a template. Now if only I had key to color code numbers they use.

GuestToo · #15 Post by **GuestToo** » Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:36

you can use Puppy's grabc color picker (in the Graphics section of the menu) to get the numbers corresponding to the color you click on ... i did that when i made a few Icewm themes, because i didn't like most of the default Icewm themes

rarsa · #16 Post by **rarsa** » Fri 30 Sep 2005, 00:25

Actually I've use the color picker to get the exact color I want when creating a theme.

As for the available fonts. It took me some minutes to figure it out:

The fonts directori is in "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/font.dir"

You can play with the available fonts using the "Xfontsel font viewer" utility: Under the " Start | Utilities | Xfontsel font viewer" menu entry. There you can choose the different characteristics you are looking for in a font and it chooses one of the possible fonts that match that description. You can narrow the characteristics until you get only one font.

By the way: In my monitor the antialiased fonts look horrible. I set all my fonts to antialiased="false" in my themes.

BarryK · #17 Post by **BarryK** » Fri 30 Sep 2005, 00:37

Not liking JWM "themes" at all. XP bright blue and yellow is just as bad as orange and peach. Hurts my eyes and is distracting.

Yes, that XP thing is hard on the eyes!

The GTK theme files are in /etc/gtk
The JWM theme files are in /root/.jwm/themes
Some background images are in /usr/share/images

So, if anyone comes up with improvements for any of those
files, send them to me.

For example /etc/gtk/gtkrc.black is not very good, and I think
needs to be replaced with something else.

mouldy · #18 Post by **mouldy** » Fri 30 Sep 2005, 01:07

Thanks Guest2, didnt even know Puppy had something like grabc. Also anybody interested here is a list of colors with hex equivalent:

http://www.breakingpar.com/bkp/home.nsf ... FB00147FAB

http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/re ... lor_codes/

I must have been in bad mood today. This is a challenge. I sure can come up with something more pleasing on my own than whats available. Could even duplicate the old fvwm95 color scheme. Personally I like light pastel colors such as the light blue and white on fvwm95. Its quite easy to ignore and doesnt distract from webpage. Dark and bright colors are a distraction. Clashing colors are just designed to give me a headache. You can tell I am not a fan of M$ XP color scheme. Though I do like that one wallpaper of theirs with the stucco house and the blue window frame and red ladder is it? Not enough to borrow it to use in Puppy but its ok.

Guest · #19 Post by **Guest** » Mon 03 Oct 2005, 19:09

Hello to all,

I'm a relatively new Puppy User for several months now (I just love it), but I was appalled at the Orange/Peach Paint all over the Desktop in 1.05.

I just wanted to respectfully register my strong desire to see this color scheme come to an end with this release - and to have 1.06 come out with the default color scheme back to normal. (I really like JWM - it seems even faster than FVWM95 - but I just cannot tolerate this all this orange-and-peach that seems so embedded that it takes several separate setting changes to get rid of it - I still can't get it all off of certain parts)

Please, I am hoping Barry, or whoever is in charge of this will either go back to the previous (1.04) default colors, or create some other new basic scheme that is not quite so nerve-jangling and distracting as this orange disaster. Orange-and-peach are makes the desktop feel like Halloween decorations, or children's birthday party napkins; for those of us who are very sensitive to color, it is intolerable.

Please, please, whoever is in charge of this, please consider re-theming JWM conservatively for the mass majority of users, and let the Orange-Peach minority be the ones who have to go to lengths to make their desktop that way, instead of the average user. ...or at least move the orange to an option rather than the default.

I was just reading the news about the new Puppy "Service Pak;" Would it be possible to have a "De-Orangification Pak" that would ease all the setting changes involved in getting rid of this scheme? (especially for the newer, less experienced Puppy faithful such as myself) ... just a thought.

Anyway, thanks so much for tolerating this little rant (I was so looking forward to 1.05, and the colors were just so off-putting that I cannot even bear to look at it)

Anyway, I do love Puppy, thanks to all who are responsible for this gem, and who continue to works so hard at making it even better all the time.

Best Regards to all,
kcin

rarsa · #20 Post by **rarsa** » Mon 03 Oct 2005, 21:23

Would it be possible to have a "De-Orangification Pak'

Here you can find some 'deorangification packs': http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... highlight=

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

How do I change the color theme in Puppy 1.05?

How do I change the color theme in Puppy 1.05?

Change the gtk theme through the menu...

De-Orangification Plea