Re: grdb 0.0.1 (krdb for gnome)

[shunter bigsky net]

I accidentally sent this only to Miguel, but thought others might have
the same question...

----- Forwarded message from Samuel S Hunter II <shunter@bigsky.net> -----

Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 01:03:32 -0700
From: Samuel S Hunter II <shunter@bigsky.net>
To: Miguel de Icaza <miguel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: grdb 0.0.1 (krdb for gnome)
X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i
In-Reply-To: <200002220524.XAA04567@erandi.helixcode.com>; from miguel@gnu.org on Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 11:24:50PM -0600

On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 11:24:50PM -0600, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> I am not sure what krdb is :-)
> 
> I ran grdb, and I did not notice it doing anything really.  Can you
> explain what it does?
> 
> It seems like my xterms changed color, I will assume they changed to
> the current theme color?

That's about the size of it. grdb basically builds some preprocessor
defines based on the colors for the current (at the time grdb is run)
gtk theme. These defines and the contents of the .ad app-defaults
files are piped into xrdb to have motif and xt based apps blend more
with the gtk apps.

Its not a very complex application, but Chris Ausbrooks posted here
(gnome-devel) awhile back asking about it, and it did look pretty
straightforward. So I tried it... His mail had the title "grdb anyone?"
and it includes the krdb readme as an attachment.

With kde, you are given a theme properies option that says "apply fonts
and colors to non-kde apps". Then, each time kde starts or you change 
your kde theme, krdb gets run. It really is kind of a nice touch.
Eventually, I'd like to see the same sort of thing in gnome. Right now,
I have it set to run when gnome starts.  Also, if you're into changing
themes alot, you'd have to rerun grdb manually after each change.

I have new version that I plan to release soon. It's not gnome specific,
just gtk, so I'm not sure if announcing on gnome-announce is the right
thing to do. The new version includes processing of ~/.Xdefaults. It also
uses automake/autoconf. I'll also try to add documentation that doesn't 
presuppose knowledge of krdb.

I also hope to have some before and after pictures up (along with actual
html files) on my website to help show how a few major apps change.
I'll try to get all this done by wednesday, but no promises.

If I haven't been clear enough, maybe Chris will help me out.

As an aside, I haven't touched the font handling yet. Does anyone know
if its possible to (easily) go from a GdkFont to the string that
specified it? for example:
 -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1

Hope that cleared things up a little.
Sam Hunter <shunter@bigsky.net>

----- End forwarded message -----