[arch-general] Frustrated with Crappy looking Firefox and OpenOffice GTK & QT themes?

[David C. Rankin]

After mucking around trying to get firefox and openoffice to look right, I 
thought I would pass on a few tips. For those of you that know already, just 
hit delete.

The dull boxy appearance of both GTK and some Qt apps left me scratching my 
head for the right tools to fix the look. The normal qtconfig and gtk2_prefs 
just didn't do it for all applications (like basket and other kde3 now sort of 
kde4 apps) Trial and error and google helped. The main tools are:

GTK Preferences (ff has both GTK and Qt)

  /usr/bin/gtk2_prefs    (themes and more)

  /usr/bin/gtk-chtheme   (change theme ** Don't over look this one)

Qt Preferences

  /usr/bin/qtconfig      (themes and more)

** also the gnome-control-center collects most of the tools for you in one 
place. I don't use gnome, but I installed the control center for convenience.

The packages involved are (with the addtional nice themes):

GTK TOOLS & ENGINES

gnome-control-center 2.28.1-1
gtk2_prefs 0.4.1-1
gtk 1.2.10-9
gtk2 2.18.3-2
gtk-kde4 0.9b-3
gtk-chtheme 0.3.1-4

gtk1-engines 0.12-2
gtk-engines 2.18.4-1
gtk-qt-engine 1.1-1
gtk-aurora-engine 1.5.1-1
gtk-engine-murrine 0.90.3-1
gtk-rezlooks-engine 0.6-8
gtk-smooth-engine 0.6.0.1-3

QT TOOLS & PACKAGES

qt3 3.3.8-13
qt 4.5.3-3
qtcurve-gtk2 0.69.2-1
qtcurve-kde3 0.69.1-1
qtcurve-kde4 0.69.2-1

THEMES

gnome-icon-theme 2.28.0-1                                                                             
gnome-themes 2.28.1-1                                                                                 
gnome-themes-extras 2.22.0-1                                                                          
murrine-themes-collection 20090906-1
qtcurve-gtk2 0.69.2-1

Install what you want, then just run gtk2_prefs and/or gtk-chtheme (if you 
installed the additional themes), then finish up with qtconfig. You have to 
shut down and restart you application for the changes to take effect, but when 
you are done, you will have some really good looking GTK and QT themes and 
decorations. (you can even select Oxygen as your GTK and Qt theme)

The theme packages above have both light and dark themes. You can find some 
additional/better themes at art.gnome.org

Here is an example of firefox and openoffice with the touch-ups applied (60k):

http://www.3111skyline.com/download/Archlinux/fixes/gtk-qt-example.jpg


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com