look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm) Topic is solved

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look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2021-09-16, 15:41

I am installing a new home PC with xubuntu 20, on which I am trying to clone everything on my work PC with opensuse leap 42. I have successfully installed palemoon 29.4.1 from the gtk3.tar.xz, while on ooensuse I had 29.0.1 from the gtk2.tar.xz. I copied my old profile and everything which is internal to palemon works nicely, inclusive of content colour.

However there is a difference in the look and feel of the palemoon bar (the sort of stuff in good old times would have been controlled by X resources in .Xdefaults), which on xubuntu appear on a lighter background and with a smaller font. See attachments (in which I include the top left corner of a palemoon window behind some other widget on my screen). All the rest (inside the palemoon content area and outside palemoon) looks reasonably equivalent.

On both systems I use fvwm as window manager (NO "desktop environment" of any sort, also I am totally ignorant about GTK ... I simply loaded the GTK3 version of palemoon because it matched the library installed on xubuntu). Looking at some old notes in my page http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/W ... indow.html I found that to achieve such look and feel at a previous migration, what I had to do was to create a little .gtkrc-2.0 file (the one quoted in such page which is here http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/.gtkrc-2.0).

However moving such file to the new system, and even renaming it 3.0 (sic!) has no effect.
Can anybody suggest a way (either at palemoon config or at linux user config) to achieve a look similar to my old one (darker background and thicker font) ?
Attachments
xubuntu screenshot
xubuntu screenshot
suse screenshot
suse screenshot
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-16, 16:13

Welcome to GTK 3 and the future of Gnome.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by mr tribute » 2021-09-16, 19:45

Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
2021-09-16, 15:41
On both systems I use fvwm as window manager (NO "desktop environment" of any sort, also I am totally ignorant about GTK ... I simply loaded the GTK3 version of palemoon because it matched the library installed on xubuntu). Looking at some old notes in my page http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/W ... indow.html I found that to achieve such look and feel at a previous migration, what I had to do was to create a little .gtkrc-2.0 file (the one quoted in such page which is here http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/.gtkrc-2.0).

However moving such file to the new system, and even renaming it 3.0 (sic!) has no effect.
Can anybody suggest a way (either at palemoon config or at linux user config) to achieve a look similar to my old one (darker background and thicker font) ?
I don't know much about gtk, but I can tell you this: Xubuntu 20 supports gtk2. Pale Moon supports gtk2. This is a good starting point. gtkrc-2.0 is for gtk2 so will have no effect in gtk3. You can't just rename it because the "theme engine" has changed. gtk3 uses CSS to style applications. If you believe Gnome there are no themes for gtk3, only stylesheets and the only valid stylesheet is Adwaita (The Only One) made by Gnome.

So stick with gtk2. It still works in latest Debian 11 released August 14 this year. I can't tell you if your gtkrc file is correct - it looks sparse and you don't have a window background specified. The look of fonts will depend on how your fonts are configured and which version of fontlibs you have. You have to try with a gtk2 version of Pale Moon and see how far your minimal (basically only fonts specified) gtkrc can take you.

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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2021-09-16, 21:01

mr tribute wrote:
2021-09-16, 19:45
I don't know much about gtk, but I can tell you this: Xubuntu 20 supports gtk2. Pale Moon supports gtk2. gtkrc-2.0 is for gtk2 so will have no effect in gtk3.

So stick with gtk2.
For Pale Moon I saw there is a gtk2 tar file (I used a slightly older one on suse). But for ubuntu what do I have to do ? Will the installed gtk3 be backward compatible with a gtk2 palemoon executable ? Or should I load a gtk2 library ? (if so what is the apt package name ?). Along with gtk3 or replacing it ?
.... I can't tell you if your gtkrc file is correct - it looks sparse and you don't have a window background specified. The look of fonts will depend on how your fonts are configured and which version of fontlibs you have.
The gtkrc is correct and complete at least on opensuse, it was suggested years and years ago by an authoritative contributor on a suse support forum. It overrides only the few items I was interested in (the background should derive from the emacs theme, I guess)

@Moonchild: no way to bypass GTK(3) for with some CSS in the palemoon profile ?
Any tutorial about patching/cloning a theme ?

That would be a palemoon-only solution.
The .gtk2rc solution did solve the look-and-feel problem not only for pale moon (actually I was still using firefox when the suggestion was raised), but also for acroread and libre office (or open office). But I guess I won't have an acroread on ubuntu, and for libre office I am "resigned" to accept whichever change in tue UI, I use it only seldom.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by mr tribute » 2021-09-16, 22:45

Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
2021-09-16, 21:01
For Pale Moon I saw there is a gtk2 tar file (I used a slightly older one on suse). But for ubuntu what do I have to do ? Will the installed gtk3 be backward compatible with a gtk2 palemoon executable ? Or should I load a gtk2 library ? (if so what is the apt package name ?). Along with gtk3 or replacing it ?
gtk2 and gtk3 can coexist. You don't have to install anything (but check system requirements on download page just in case). Required packages should already be installed. Just download the gtk2 tarball and run it:
https://linux.palemoon.org/download/mainline/
Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
2021-09-16, 21:01
The gtkrc is correct and complete at least on opensuse, it was suggested years and years ago by an authoritative contributor on a suse support forum. It overrides only the few items I was interested in (the background should derive from the emacs theme, I guess)
OK. I can't shake off the feeling you landed here in a time capsule (despite having a long-standing and active account). It's a different world now. You probably don't want to mess with gtk3 as long as gtk2 is alive.

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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Kruppt » 2021-09-17, 00:16

GTK3 configs reside in $HOME/.config/gtk-3.0

kruppt@aptosid-shuttle2:~$ ls -al $HOME/.config/gtk-3.0
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 kirkus kirkus 4096 May 4 15:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 247 kirkus kirkus 12288 Sep 16 20:11 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 kirkus kirkus 605 May 4 15:32 bookmarks
-rw-r--r-- 1 kirkus kirkus 162 Sep 2 2017 gtk.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 kirkus kirkus 607 Nov 27 2018 settings.ini

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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2021-09-17, 10:50

mr tribute wrote:
2021-09-16, 22:45
gtk2 and gtk3 can coexist. ... Required packages should already be installed. Just download the gtk2 tarball and run it
Thanks ! Done it and now pale moon is back to the older .gtk2rc look and feel. :D
OK. I can't shake off the feeling you landed here in a time capsule (despite having a long-standing and active account). It's a different world now. You probably don't want to mess with gtk3 as long as gtk2 is alive.
OK, I'll forget about gtk3. Just for my education, I'll appreciate if Moonchild or any other developer would provide a pointer to a tutorial about writing Palemoon themes (I've always been happy with the default theme with text-only buttons, but I suppose a theme can achieve a permanent, palemoon only [i.e. GTK independent] solution).

About your other comment, I think one of the issues in the praised motto "your browser, your way" is also to preserve previous look-and-feel's which one finds functional. I do use things which I might have found functional long ago (for instance The Hessling Editor, installation is next on the list), I have on my current computer files which are dated many many years before that specific computer was unpacked (thanks to rsync !), and on my displays there is a motto by Dante (Inferno, XXIV, 106-108) "Cosi' per li gran savi si confessa / Che la Fenice muore e poi rinasce, / Quando al cinquecentesimo anno appressa." i.e. Thus the great wise testify / That the Phoenix dies and is born again, / When the five-hundredth year gets close :mrgreen:
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by The Squash » 2021-09-18, 20:25

I couldn't find a GTK+ 2 theme called "Traditional". I think your GTK+ 2 Pale Moon falls back to a spartan fallback theme known as Raleigh, instead of using a theme you have installed literally called "Traditional".

The problem is that you are missing the proper GTK+ 3 theme. A fallback theme is used; on GTK+ 3 the fallback theme is Adwaita, which is newer, lower-contrast and infinitely slower than Raleigh.

If you want the same experience on the GTK+ 3 version of Pale Moon, you need a good GTK+ 3 theme. GTK+ 3 themes are written in CSS and are often harder to design than their GTK+ 2 counterparts, despite what the GNOME people want you to think. I know of two Raleigh-like themes for you to use:
Let the record show that I am slightly biased towards the latter, as it seems to be better written, more authentic, and written by a friend of mine. You are the judge in the end.

As for the Helvetica fonts, I'm sure you could use them under GTK+ 3 -- maybe by putting this in your ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

Code: Select all

*
{
  font-family: "Helvetica";
}
Keep in mind, however, that the GNOME developers are looking to remove old bitmap font support soon, and those fonts will look ugly on modern versions of GTK and Pango anyway. (Ahh -- I just love the way the GNOME team breaks stuff and them uses the breakage as grounds to remove it!)
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-19, 20:05

You seem to be confusing two things here. Pale Moon browser themes versus (Linux) system themes. On the browser side, we can't do much about the theming engine in use on the system side and writing a Pale Moon browser theme won't help you in that case because GTK/system widgets and native menus will still be handled by the system theme.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2021-09-19, 20:45

I thought that palemoon themes would override whatever system themes control the background and fonts in the menu bar, navigation toolbar and bookmark toolbar.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-19, 22:05

They possibly -can- go full-bore all custom skin but that's usually not done since it would literally make the theme break with any sort of system style integration there might be.
e.g. if you really want to do something like that you'd have to supply custom styling for all form controls, buttons, system widgets, dialog controls, etc. etc. and even then that might not necessarily cover all system dialogs or usages. It's definitely not a small task.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by The Squash » 2021-09-20, 19:58

Moonchild wrote:
2021-09-19, 20:05
ou seem to be confusing two things here. Pale Moon browser themes versus (Linux) system themes.
But... but... I just wrote about using a different GTK+ 3 (system) theme! Where's the confusion here?
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-20, 22:37

I replied to lucio ciapetti's post directly above mine.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by The Squash » 2021-09-21, 19:38

It wasn't directly above your post -- my post was directly above your post -- hence my confusion. Thanks for clarifying.
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Re: look and feel of palemoon bars (xubuntu with fvwm)

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-21, 20:26

Sorry for the confusion. For obvious reasons I'm not operating at peak efficiency at the moment.
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