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Getting Started with Theme Creation

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caccini1602
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Getting Started with Theme Creation

Tue Nov 22, 2016 4:32 pm
Hello,

Is there a good guide available for how to get started with creating custom KDE themes? When I go into the System Settings tool, I can select different things for color schemes, Application Style, Desktop Themes, Mouse Cursor Themes, etc. I am wondering about how to get started creating my own custom themes. I have enough experience with software development to be comfortable working with source code, if that makes any difference. I'm just looking for a good guide on how to get started with creating my own custom themes, either by starting with modifying an existing one, or starting a new one from scratch.

Back in the 1990s, I really loved the old classic UNIX Window Manager look with WMs like MWM, FVWM, TWM, etc. Modern Desktop Environments have so much more functionality that it makes it hard to just go back to FVWM. I would like to be able to use KDE to create a complete theme (cursor, desktop, color scheme, etc.) that includes all of the modern functionality of KDE, but also re-creates the look and feel of the parts that I liked about the old Window Managers. I want to be able to be able to have the old-style X cursor, the root window menus and window lists, Motif-style window decorations, and other things like that.

I have found how I can go into the files in ~/.kde/share/ and edit some files to make changes, but I'm not finding all of the things I'm looking for there. As a few examples:

Mouse Cursor themes: How do you define which cursor in a set will be shown when the cursor is in a specified location? I can see that the X cursor I like is in several of the different cursor themes I have installed, but how do I get it to show that one when the mouse is over the root window?

Menus: Is there a place where I can define what menu will show if I click a mouse button while the cursor is over the background window, and what the contents of that window will be?

Good documentation about how to get started would probably be enough for me to learn from, if someone could show me where to look for such a guide. Thanks!
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Rog131
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KDE TechBase

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Techbase.kde.org is primarily aimed at external developers. You can find there documentation and help to build on or extending KDE products on your own projects...



-->Plasma development tutorials: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma
----->Plasma 4 theming: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tu ... ma4#Themes
----->Plasma 5 theming: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tu ... ma5#Themes


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