Re: gtk3 (GtkTextView) and MacOS

[Roger Davis <rbd soest hawaii edu>]

Thanks, Jim, your hint on setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME led me to a bunch of 
other useful info on the web that I have been slogging through all morning 
now. I have had some success but am still far from the finish line.

On my Mac, if I set XDG_CONFIG_HOME to 
/opt/local/share/themes/HighContrast, which is where MacPorts dumped the
HighContrast theme, and which contains a gtk-3.0 subdirectory with the 
files gtk.css, gtk.gresource and settings.ini, my app successfully loads 
the HighContrast theme, although I still have the same font problems 
within my GtkTextView windows.

Similarly, I can make my own settings.ini file in ~/gtksettings/gtk-3.0, 
set XDG_CONFIG_HOME to ~/gtksettings, and my app processes that file, but 
again with the same font issues. That file contains a line of the form

   gtk-font-name = fontname fontsize

e.g.,

   gtk-font-name = Sans 10

and I can tweak the fontsize value and successfully get the altered font 
size in my app. However, absolutely nothing that I do to the fontname 
results in the use of a different font. In fact,

   gtk-font-name = FontConfusion 10

still loads exactly the same font!

So, I am now convinced this is some kind of font installation or 
configuration problem. I am guessing that my MacOS gtk3 can't find any 
fonts whatsoever except for this exceptionally unintelligent fallback font 
it seems to be using. Does anyone know where gtk3 is looking for its 
fonts? I've spent quite a while looking for font files on my CentOS 7 
system where I'm not having font problems, and actually can't find many 
there anywhere! Can anyone give me a reference to some decent 
documentation on where gtk3 font management that describes how to name 
fonts with the gtk-font-name property and how that name is associated 
with an actual font file? I sure have not been able to find any on my own!

Thanks again,

Roger


> I found (eventually) that I could do the same on the Mac if I set the 
> environment variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/path/to/theme/gtk-3.0/ (I am not 
> sure where your themes are installed using MacPorts. Perhaps 
> /usr/share/themes/Ambiance or whatever). prior to executing the program. 
> The selected (and perhaps edited) theme is then used over the embedded 
> default. If memory serves me correctly... I was able to copy themes from
> Linux to the Mac and use them.
>
> jim...   JIm Charlton