Theming Support

[Jonathan Ernst]

Hello,

Now that theming using .msstyle is working quite well, wouldnt'it be
possible to use the current used theme in the currently used window
manager.

I think it would be of great value to have windows applications
integrate semlessly with the linux desktop without having to look for a
msstyle theme that looks like the same as the currently used theme.

Searching a little bit, it seems that something like this is on the way:

http://wiki.winehq.org/ThemingSupport
"Write a GTK+ theming bridge so Win32 apps get GTK+ themes
automatically."

Are we (=you) far away from this step ?

Keep up the good work,

[Mike Hearn]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 12:28:11 +0200, Jonathan Ernst wrote:
> I think it would be of great value to have windows applications integrate
> semlessly with the linux desktop without having to look for a msstyle
> theme that looks like the same as the currently used theme.

Absolutely!
> http://wiki.winehq.org/ThemingSupport "Write a GTK+ theming bridge so
> Win32 apps get GTK+ themes automatically."
>
> Are we (=you) far away from this step ?

As far as I know, nobody is working on it. I wrote that bit on the Wiki
because it's the logical next step.

One issue is that GTK+ 2.8 (the newest version, just released) now uses
Cairo for rendering. I'm not sure how we should approach this - I suspect
if widgets start drawing themselves without using the GDI stuff will break
in weird ways (clipping and such), so it may need odd hacks like compiling
GTK+ and Cairo as ELF DLLs so they can load native theming engines but
draw using a Win32 build of Cairo.

thanks -mike

[Frank Richter]

On 28.08.2005 14:30, Mike Hearn wrote:
> One issue is that GTK+ 2.8 (the newest version, just released) now uses
> Cairo for rendering. I'm not sure how we should approach this - I suspect
> if widgets start drawing themselves without using the GDI stuff will break
> in weird ways (clipping and such), so it may need odd hacks like compiling
> GTK+ and Cairo as ELF DLLs so they can load native theming engines but
> draw using a Win32 build of Cairo.

Wouldn't it be possible to, say, have the GTK theming draw to a pixmap
(GdkPixmap or so, afaik with my meager GTK knowledge), get a raw data
buffer (RGBA or so) and draw this with Win32 APIs (e.g. AlphaBlend())?

-f.r.

[Mike Hearn]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:58:07 +0200, Frank Richter wrote:
> Wouldn't it be possible to, say, have the GTK theming draw to a pixmap
> (GdkPixmap or so, afaik with my meager GTK knowledge), get a raw data
> buffer (RGBA or so) and draw this with Win32 APIs (e.g. AlphaBlend())?

It might. There are actually two issues here:

1) How to integrate GTK+/Win32 drawing
2) All the usual issues with using GTK+ theming engines.

(2) covers things like building fake widget objects to please theme
engines that assume they have access to a real GTK+ widget (many do). So
it's not totally trivial, but as Firefox and OpenOffice both do it we
should be able to do so also.

Drawing GTK+ widgets to a double buffer then blending sounds very slow.
Cairo was designed to do hardware accelerated drawing via XRENDER, it'd be
a shame to throw that away. Perhaps a better way is to extend our GDI so
it is possible to mix regular GDI and Cairo drawing together (for instance
by setting the Cairo clip region/pen color to the GDI equivalents before
passing control to the theming engine)? Alexandre would know for sure.

thanks -mike

[Mike Hearn]

For those who want another screenshot:

http://plan99.net/~mike/files/winecfg-reluna.png

As you can see there are still quite a few visual glitches. The tab
control or property sheet API doesn't seem to set the embedded window to
the right theme/position, though I've seen similar artifacts on the real
Windows XP so maybe we can't fix that.

There's a fixme about image loading. Frank, you can get Reluna.msstyles
from here:

http://plan99.net/~mike/files/Reluna.msstyles

Also buttons and combo boxes aren't themed yet, it seems.

thanks -mike

[Frank Richter]

On 28.08.2005 15:40, Mike Hearn wrote:
> As you can see there are still quite a few visual glitches.

Hm, maybe I should point people to Luna or MS' Royale or something
simple like Watercolor Lite... they seem to work well so far ;)

-f.r.

[Stefan Dösinger]

Am Sonntag, 28. August 2005 14:00 schrieb Frank Richter:
> On 28.08.2005 15:40, Mike Hearn wrote:
> > As you can see there are still quite a few visual glitches.
>
> Hm, maybe I should point people to Luna or MS' Royale or something
> simple like Watercolor Lite... they seem to work well so far ;)

One other question: I've noticed that Windows users need to patch Microsofts 
uxtheme.dll to load themes which are not signed. Is there any possibility to 
use wines uxtheme.dll with Windows XP or is it too different? From the past 
discussions I think that they are too different.

Stefan

[Frank Richter]

On 28.08.2005 18:53, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
> One other question: I've noticed that Windows users need to patch Microsofts 
> uxtheme.dll to load themes which are not signed. Is there any possibility to 
> use wines uxtheme.dll with Windows XP or is it too different? From the past 
> discussions I think that they are too different.

I would think that a lot of Windows internal-ish things would depend on
stuff that Wine uxtheme does not have or only partially - e.g. there's a
Windows service to somehow theme window NC areas, and to my knowledge it
isn't really known how it interacts/uses uxtheme. I think using Wine
uxtheme on native WinXP may not be desireable.

-f.r.

[Stefan Dösinger]

Am Sonntag, 28. August 2005 10:28 schrieben Sie:
> Hello,
>
> Now that theming using .msstyle is working quite well, wouldnt'it be
> possible to use the current used theme in the currently used window
> manager.

Btw, I have a really dumb question: How do I use a .msstyle theme? I know that 
this would better asked on wine-users, but now theming was mentioned I ask 
here.

I'd like to see a QT theme bridge too, but a gtk bridge would for the start as 
there's a qt->gtk theme translator.

Stefan

[Mike Hearn]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:21:39 +0000, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
> Btw, I have a really dumb question: How do I use a .msstyle theme? I know
> that this would better asked on wine-users, but now theming was mentioned
> I ask here.

Brian, praise be to his name, explains this in the latest WWN issue. He
also posted some screenshots, though the theme he used is IMO a bit ugly
:) At work I am using ReLuna Blue which is really nice.
> I'd like to see a QT theme bridge too, but a gtk bridge would for the
> start as there's a qt->gtk theme translator.

That might be hard. Qt is GPLd, so it cannot be linked against proprietary
code. However TrollTechs intention was clearly to make money off a free
toolkit which is a good business model. I doubt they'd care if somebody
did a Wine theming bridge, even if it's technically against the rules.

Another issue is that Qt does not have a particularly good track record
of binary compatibility - not entirely TrollTechs fault of course, but
still, I suspect it might be hard to get into CVS and products like
Crossover and the mythical as-yet-unwritten Wine autopackage could not
distribute it.

thanks -mike

[Jacek Caban]

Stefan Dösinger wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 28. August 2005 10:28 schrieben Sie:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Now that theming using .msstyle is working quite well, wouldnt'it be
> > possible to use the current used theme in the currently used window
> > manager.
>
> Btw, I have a really dumb question: How do I use a .msstyle theme? I know that 
> this would better asked on wine-users, but now theming was mentioned I ask 
> here.

It's in the newest WWN 289:
http://www.winehq.org/?issue=289#Theming%20Support

Jacek