Re: Custom colors via ~/.gtkrc-2.0

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 23 April 2013 05:29, Jan Pokorný <jpokorny redhat com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> this is a (sort of) follow up to Changing conflict colors in gtk-3
> theme topic [1].
>
> My problem is similar to what the original poster stated.  Color
> settings for meld in .gtkrc-2.0 in home dir is not taken into account
> because application-owned configuration (/usr/share/meld/gtkrc in my
> case) always takes a precendence no matter how I set the priority in
> .gtkrc-2.0 [*].  However, when I remove that global configuration
> file, .gtkrc-2.0 settings are suddenly honored.
>
> This might be a GTK 2+ (or its Python binding) bug or not, however
> semantics as presented in [2] seems to prove the former.  Is this user
> override working properly for anybody without a need to remove app's
> gtkrc first?
>
> I am using gtk2 package at version 2.24.16 (LXDE desktop).  Having
> GTK_DEBUG=all in environment haven't shed any light into this; trying
> explicit GTK{2,}_RC_FILES=${HOME}/.gtkrc-2.0 brought no change
> whatsoever.

My instructions apparently missed a step (because I didn't realise it
was required): you also need to change the name of the style itself
for this to work. For example, this is the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file I've been
using for testing:

style "meld-color-scheme-user"
{
    color["replace-bg"] = "#ff0000"
}
widget "meldapp.*" style : highest "meld-color-scheme-user"

As an aside, I'd love it if someone who actually used this (I don't)
wanted to write up details on how to customise Meld's colours on
live.gnome.org, and maybe provide some sample configurations for
popular dark themes.

> As a side question, it looks like default font color (beside
> highlighted sections) cannot be changed.  Or can it?
> If not, it would be really helpful because font color that is
> OK on default background may be unreadable in let's say addition
> bubble.

It can't currently, no. I'd be okay with adding this, but every time I
touch themeing issues, they end up being more complicated than I'd
like. For example, we may need to add support for setting text and
background colour for normal (i.e., matching) sections. Anyway, I've
got many other things on my plate, so I'm not likely to get back to
theme stuff again any time soon. If someone wants to look at this, I'd
be happy to provide what assistance I can.

cheers,
Kai