Hi,

my first post and I'm already going into creating new designs

I am really sorry first of all as I have Google'd around a bit which in each case pointed me here on many similar topics with what seems to be like people asking the same thing.

Please forgive me for this but I haven't found the answer to my question yet...

What I would like to know is where to find config files and directories for all customizable KDE4 components??

I suspect that this will depend on the version of KDE4 according to what I have read and also which OS/Linux distro one is using.

I currently run KDE4 on KUbuntu 9.04 (don't ask me which version it is I am new to KDE!!), Gnome2 used to pretty much work out of the box with in depth config etc which is why I need some assistance.

Of course there are many elements to making up a theme and many different themes too according to what I have been reading... sorry the links aren't here but they're on another machine they all lead back here though

The ones I am interested in seem to be a bunch of SVG files, however upon running updatedb then locate *.svg there are a lot of these files in many different places and I have no idea what they all are as I can't make sense of them from their names.

What I am looking into doing to start with is working around the Oxygen theme which is the default on my current desktop. I'd like to reverse engineer this so that I can modify things like colors and icons like the Kicker icon which took me too many hours yesterday to find it's location of which I have now managed to successfully change. But like with the gnome desktop in a theme you can if I recall correctly, tell the theme to use a specific desktop background say image.jpg just for example purposes.
Then finally package the theme and move it around to different OS's/Linux distro's.

Components I wish to include in this theme would be:

desktop background
icon theme
color scheme

...for now!

So when user installs theme everything is installed at once, meaning that no separate icon theme, color theme, or background image needs to be installed.

I have no idea if this is possible even so any advice, links or directory locations would be great!!!

I really would like this to be as portable as possible too if that's doable?

Many thanks

These are the pages I mentioned earlier:

viewtopic.php?f=67&t=36761

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=44911

according to one of the links: system settings -> advanced -> Desktop Theme Details

lets you add some customization but there is no provision for saving the theme, you can only apply the settings to the current theme!

I haven't actually done that so if anyone knows better I'd appreciate the info, but what I really would love to do to start with before modding or tricking out the system altogether is copy the oxygen theme into another theme, say test; then once manipulated package it for distribution. This again I need help with as I don't know if I can simple Zip the folders and install them that way or if I need to do something else?

The way you wish to theme is not possible as one package, but is as several components.

Plasma themes - /usr/share/apps/desktoptheme
Oxygen icons - /usr/share/icons/oxygen
Colour schemes - /usr/share/apps/color-schemes
Wallpapers - /usr/share/apps/wallpapers

Many thanks for the response and for the directory locations!!

I seem to have mine in different places though??

The desktop theme seems to be located here:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/

and is called default not Oxygen.

The wallpapers dir seems to be under /usr/share/wallpapers

and the color schemes are here: /usr/share/kde4/apps/color-schemes

This is all pretty confusing! Does it mean that if I develop a scheme on KUbuntu it won't be portable to use on say BSD or another distro??

Another thing is that the KDE Kicker icon for Oxygen theme is located here:

/usr/share/icons/oxygen/32x32/places/start-here-kde.png

Is there a config file that actually locates the icon name and directory for the Kciker and other various components??

The really odd thing is that the Crystal SVG icon scheme seems to be in the same place as the oxygen theme for the kicker icon at least being put in:

/usr/share/icons/oxygen/32x32/places/start-here.png

I don't know how all this is tied together...

If I copied the /usr/share/icons/oxygen to /usr/share/icons/mytest, how do I add these to a new desktop theme?? In the sense that if I right click on the KDE4 desktop I get into desktop settings with theme set to Oxygen. I am guessing this is governed by the information in:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/metadata.desktop

However the contents of that file do not show anything other then the name of the theme and background information. This folder actually seems to be more about plugins or widgets or something too.

Sorry for so much confusion but I am beginning to think that all these components:

Plasma themes - /usr/share/apps/desktoptheme
Oxygen icons - /usr/share/icons/oxygen
Colour schemes - /usr/share/apps/color-schemes
Wallpapers - /usr/share/apps/wallpapers

are mutually exclusive, meaning they don't depend on each other at all and are totally separate entities???

Correct, they are completely seperate. The difference in locations is probably because I install mine directly from trunk, or because I install under a different prefix.

Ok so something I really need to get now!

Is there a file governing which theme is used, maybe somewhere under ~/.kde or so so that one can configure which theme will be active without using the GUI based options.

And also I'd like to know if there is a config file for the icons used??

As I've mentioned the kde kicker icon is at this locations:

/usr/share/icons/oxygen/32x32/places/start-here-kde.png

so I'm wondering if it has to be called that and if it has to be located there??

Just so that I have better control over it!

Finally one of my color schemes is located in a local sub dir under;

~/.kde/share/apps/color-schemes

so if I put this in here:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/color-schemes

that would make it global wouldn't it??

Many thanks again. Also sorry if I am asking alot of questions for config files but I don't usually like to work from GUI unless I have to meaning office doc or web browsing, even emails I can get away with on CLI
I guess is just my preferred way and a style that suites me, but also it means that I have much more control in order of creating themes which fit on live CD's etc.

The file $KDEHOME/share/config/plasmarc controls the Plasma theme in use

Code: Select all

[Theme]
name=air

Each colour setting appears to be manually entered in $KDEHOME/share/config/kdeglobals ( Only small section below, there are many more )

Code: Select all

[Colors:Window]
BackgroundAlternate=218,217,216
BackgroundNormal=224,223,222
DecorationFocus=43,116,199
DecorationHover=119,183,255

The Kickoff icon must be named start-here-kde.png and in $ICONTHEME/$RESOLUTION/places/

Placing the Colour scheme in /usr/share/kde4/apps/color-schemes would make it global.

Many thanks I really appreciate all your help, patience and time

This helps me out so much really!!!!

One quick extra question probably isn't possible but still:

is it possible to have the Kicker icon wider then NNxNN pixels so something for a 32x32 icon, 50x32?

I tried this and automatically the icon got scaled to 32x32 size so was just wondering if there was a way to do that - no worries if not!

thanx

The icon will always be automatically scaled from the best possible resolution, and the icon will always be square ( ie. 52x52 would be valid )

Note that the appropriately sized icon needs to go under the appropriate folder ( ie. 64x64 icons under 64x64 folder )

The icon will always be automatically scaled from the best possible resolution, and the icon will always be square ( ie. 52x52 would be valid )

Note that the appropriately sized icon needs to go under the appropriate folder ( ie. 64x64 icons under 64x64 folder )

aaah ok!! I had it in the 32x32 folder which is fine but since it was already 50x32 as it was taken from the Gnome2 desktop environment it scaled.

Shame that it has to be square but is only a small detail

Thanks