MATH DEPT Computer News, Volume 18

How to change the settings for the colors in for your themes in the Ice WIndow Manager


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I don't recommend that you do any of the things that I explain here.

See

/pkgs/X11/src/PURDUE_MATH/icewm/icewm-1.0.1/doc/icewm.html

for more gory details than I give here.

The system reads the default colors for the themes in the subdirectories of

/pkgs/X11/lib/X11/icewm/themes

To change them, I first created a .icewm directory in my home directory by typing

cd
mkdir .icewm

NOTE: You might have already done this step if you changed your preferences file as instructed on the previous web page.

Next, I created a themes subdirectory of this new directory by typing

cd .icewm
mkdir themes

Lets say you want to dork around with the nice default theme. Then create a subdirectory of your new themes directory called nice via

cd
cd .icewm
cd themes
mkdir nice

Next copy the system nice default.theme file to this new directory by typing

cd ~/.icewm/themes/nice
cp /pkgs/X11/lib/X11/icewm/themes/nice/default.theme  .

Assuming that you have placed the lines

# Theme
Theme="nice/default.theme"

in your personal ~/.icewm/preferences file, now all you have to do is edit certain lines in your ~/.icewm/themes/nice/default.theme file to change the colors to something you like better.

You can experiment with different colors to see what you like. NOTE: You'll need to log off and back on again to see the effect of your changes.

Here is the actual file:

ThemeDescription="A nice default theme"
ThemeAuthor="Marko Macek"
Look=nice
TitleBarHeight=20
TitleButtonsSupported="xmisrh"

ColorNormalBorder="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorActiveBorder="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorActiveTitleBar="rgb:00/00/A0"
ColorNormalTitleBar="rgb:A0/A0/A0"
ColorNormalButton="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorNormalTitleBarText="rgb:00/00/00"
ColorActiveTitleBarText="rgb:FF/FF/FF"
ColorNormalMenu="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorActiveMenuItem="rgb:A0/A0/A0"
ColorNormalMenuItemText="rgb:00/00/00"
ColorActiveMenuItemText="rgb:00/00/00"
ColorDisabledMenuItemText="rgb:80/80/80"
ColorMoveSizeStatus="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorMoveSizeStatusText="rgb:00/00/00"
ColorDefaultTaskBar="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorNormalTaskBarApp="rgb:C0/C0/C0"
ColorNormalTaskBarAppText="rgb:00/00/00"
ColorActiveTaskBarApp="rgb:E0/E0/E0"
ColorActiveTaskBarAppText="rgb:00/00/00"
For example, to change the active title bar to maroon, just change the line

ColorActiveTitleBar="rgb:00/00/A0"

to

ColorActiveTitleBar="maroon"

Log off and back on to see the change. After a little bit of experimenting, you will probably decide that the system defaults are actually the best. You can delete the files and directories in your personal .icewm directory to get the defaults back.


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