Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Walt H

While not an earth shattering problem, I would like to find a way to change the look at ical so it looks a little elss, shall we say, dull. Specifically, I'd like to lose the gray. I searched the web and found some documentation, but the descriptions differ from what is in /root/.usr/lib/ical/v2.3/pref.tcl and I couldn't find any other file that seemed to have the editable properties described in the man page, which I found at http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/ical.1.html.

I've managed to change the font, and I can change the background of calendar sections that I click on, but I don't want to have to click on a blank entry in order to change the color. (I've sort of ended up with a combination of white (items selected then unselected) and gray (items not selected) and occasionally khaki (for currently selected items).

The white below the calendar was achieved by clicking in each section of the space. (Although there are no lines, it seems to be divided much the same way as the days are divided into 30-minute blocks.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how to alter this? Thanks in advance.

BarryK · Posted: Wed 17 Aug 2005, 02:29 Post subject:

So walt, does that mean you are actually using Ical?
Any usage difficulties -- apart from the comsmetic issues?

Bruce B · Posted: Wed 17 Aug 2005, 03:51 Post subject:

Barry I use ical. There are some issues crazy in the text mode section of the program. Has to do with backspace, delete and some other keys.

Sort of hard to figure. I don't think it's a bug, rather the keybinding and the design or something. Maybe the explanation is in textwin.tcl

I just look at it as part of the personality of ical. Otherwise a nice program.

Walt H · Posted: Wed 17 Aug 2005, 12:40 Post subject:

Walt H · Posted: Tue 23 Aug 2005, 15:11 Post subject:

Does anyone have any ideas about how to change the look of ical? A google search eventually turned up the online man page (apparently Apple also has an ical application , which is related to Mozilla's calendar). That page mentions some attributes that can be changed in ical, but Puppy's version uses different names for those attributes, and changing most of them does nothing. I can change the font, and I can change the background of selected entries, but cannot change the default background from the ugly slate gray.

I was able to change those colors in XCalendar, which I would have thought would be less configurable. Suggestions anyone? Thanks.

puppian · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 538 Location: PuppyLand

Do you mean changing the item background?
The help file mentioned X resouces.

Would this help?

Confused

Walt H · Posted: Tue 23 Aug 2005, 17:18 Post subject:

Thanks. I'll take a look. I had seen mention of XResources, but never saw any indication of where they were stored. Did not come across this article. Thanks again.

Bruce B · Posted: Tue 23 Aug 2005, 20:03 Post subject:

Walt, in Puppy it is ~/.xinitrc

I would not put the setting in there because of a potential problem because some dotpups install a different .xinitrc and backup the old one.

There is a way to put your ical changes in its own file and merge it with Xresources. That's what I'd recommend.

Walt H · Posted: Wed 24 Aug 2005, 00:05 Post subject:

Bruce B · Posted: Wed 24 Aug 2005, 21:12 Post subject:

Walt H · Posted: Thu 25 Aug 2005, 00:57 Post subject:

Creating a .Xresources file did the trick. In my case, I ran the following command:

Bruce B · Posted: Thu 25 Aug 2005, 02:40 Post subject:

> The -nocpp flag is necessary because cpp is not present or at least not found in Puppy.

That's the conclusion I arrived at, which causes me to wonder if .xinitrc does what it is supposed to do.

Maybe Barry can read this post and determine if it (.xinitrc) needs changing. Maybe I am missing something in my consideration about this.

BTW - would you mind posting the changes you made, because I also like ical and use it.

Walt H · Posted: Thu 25 Aug 2005, 12:32 Post subject:

Sure. I'll do it tonight when I'm back at my home machine. Two things I found: 1) You have to run the -merge command everytime you make a change to .Xresources. 2) If you make an "illegal" change (e.g., an unrecognized color), Ical will simply open a small blank box. In that case, reverse change, run the -merge command again, and all should be good.

In the course of making my changes, though, I lost some of the larger font sizes (e.g., the month showed up in larger print initially), and nothing I did would bring those larger fonts back. Now, I'll be looking for ways to modify font attributes (size, bold, etc.) in .Xresources.

Bruce B · Posted: Thu 25 Aug 2005, 12:50 Post subject:

Bruce B · Posted: Thu 25 Aug 2005, 12:54 Post subject:

About COLORS:

I was not able to find a list of acceptable colors for ical.

I tried the #000000 format and it didn't seem to work

Does ical accept lightgray or lightgrey or beige?

Who knows? Maybe we could find the answer in the source files. Otherwise trial and error.