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fluxstyle(1)
============
Henrik Kinnunen <fluxgen@fluxbox.org>
v1.0rc2 26th July 2006
NAME
----
fluxstyle - A comprehensive look at styles/themes for fluxbox.
SYNOPSIS
--------
DESCRIPTION
-----------
What is a Style?
Styles, sometimes referred to as Themes, are a graphical overlay for the
fluxbox(1) window manager. If you wanted to get to know fluxbox, the styles
would be the 'look' of the 'look and feel'.
Styles are simple ASCII text files that tell Fluxbox how to generate the
appearance of different components of the window manager. The default
installation of fluxbox is shipped with many classic examples that show a
great deal of what one could do. To use one of the standard styles navigate to
the 'System Styles' menu under your main fluxbox menu.
fluxbox uses its own graphics class to render its images on the fly. By using
styles you can determine, at a great level of configurability, what your
desktop will look like. Since fluxbox was derived from blackbox many often
wonder if old themes will work on the latest releases of fluxbox. Well they
basically do, but you will have to tune them since the fluxbox code has
changed quite a bit since the initial grab.
STRUCTURE
---------
A style is made up of a few major components which then have their own
sub-directives. The major components are as follows:
The 'window.\*' directives control the appearance of the window frames,
window.tab.* controls the appearance of the window tabs, 'menu.\*' controls
the appearance of the popup menu that you see when you right click on the
desktop. 'toolbar.\*' is the bar you will see at the top or bottom of your
screen. Finally the 'slit.\*' has options you can use to customize the
appearance of the slit. However if you don't set the slit directives
specifically, the slit's appearance is controlled by the toolbar
directives instead.
To understand how the style mechanism works, it is nice to know a little about
how X11 resources work. X11 resources consist of a key and a value. The key is
constructed of several smaller keys (sometimes referred to as children),
delimited by a period (.). Keys may also contain an asterisk (\*)
to serve as a wildcard, which means that one line of text will match
several keys. This is useful for styles that are based on one or two
colors.
A more complete reference to this can be found in X(7), section 'RESOURCES'.
LOCATION
--------
There are many places to store your styles, the most common is in your
'~/.fluxbox/styles' directory. The initial installation will place the default
styles in '/usr/share/fluxbox/styles' providing a basic usable configuration.
When creating your own style, create a directory (normally the name of your
style) in '~/.fluxbox/styles/' (If the 'styles' directory doesn't exist,
create that also). While there isn't an official structure, it is
common to create a directory named after your style and place your
pixmaps directory (if required) in there along with a file called
theme.cfg (may also be named style.cfg). This file is where you will
construct your style using the components covered later in this manual
page. An example of steps taken when beginning a style project of your
own may look like:
$ cd
$ mkdir -p ~/.fluxbox/styles/YourStyle/pixmaps
$ cd ~/.fluxbox/styles/YourStyle
$ nano theme.cfg
Output of a packaged style should look like the following:
$ cd
$ tar -tjvf YourStyle.tar.bz2
.fluxbox/styles/YourStyle/theme.cfg
.fluxbox/styles/YourStyle/pixmaps
.fluxbox/styles/YourStyle/pixmaps/stick.xpm
...
Of course, all of these are just preferences, Fluxbox allows for the
customization of many things, including how you handle your styles. Just
remember, however, that if you plan to distribute your style you may find
some community bickering if you don't follow practices. :)
CREATING YOUR STYLE
-------------------
As discussed above, Fluxbox allows you to configure its four main components:
the toolbar, menus, slit and window decorations. Remember that you can
customize the slit with its own directives, otherwise the slit will take the
appearance of the toolbar.
Here are some quick examples to illustrate basic syntax:
toolbar.clock.color: green
This sets the color resource of the toolbar clock to 'green'. Another example:
menu*color: rgb:3/4/5
This sets the color resource of the menu and all of its 'children' to
`rgb:3/4/5'. (For a description of color names, see X(1).) So this one also
applies to 'menu.title.color' and 'menu.frame.color'. And with
*font: -b&h-lucida-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*
you set the font resource for all keys to this font name all at once (For
information about the fonts installed on your system, you can use a
program like xfontsel(1), gtkfontsel, or xlsfonts(1).)
In the last example you will notice the wildcard (\*) before font. In a Fluxbox
style you can set a value with a wildcard. The example means that every font
in the style will be what is specified. You can do this with any
component/value. For example if you wanted all of the text to be one color you
would do:
*textColor: rgb:3/4/5
This means that you can setup a very simple style with very few properties.
See the EXAMPLES below for an example of this in practice. Fluxbox also allows
you to override wildcards in your style. Lets take our example above and add
an override for the toolbar.clock.textColor component:
*textColor: rgb:3/4/5
toolbar.clock.textColor: rgb:255/0/0
With that all of the text will be 'rgb:3/4/5' except the toolbar clock text
which will be 'rgb:255/0/0'.
Now what makes fluxbox so spectacular is its ability to render textures on the
fly. A texture is a fillpattern that you see on some styles. Texture
descriptions are specified directly to the key that they should apply to,
e.g.:
toolbar.clock: Raised Gradient Diagonal Bevel1
toolbar.clock.color: rgb:8/6/4
toolbar.clock.colorTo: rgb:4/3/2
Don't worry, we will explain what these mean. A texture description consists
of up to five fields, which are as follows:
.Flat | Raised | Sunken
gives the component either a flat, raised or sunken appearance.
.Gradient | Solid
tells Fluxbox to draw either a solid color or a gradient texture.
.Horizontal | Vertical | Diagonal | Crossdiagonal | Pipecross | Elliptic | Rectangle | Pyramid
Select one of these texture types. They only work when *Gradient* is specified.
.Interlaced
tells fluxbox to interlace the texture (darken every other line). This option
is most commonly used with gradiented textures, but it also works in solid
textures.
.Bevel1 | Bevel2
tells fluxbox which type of bevel to use. Bevel1 is the default bevel. The
shading is placed on the edge of the image. Bevel2 is an alternative. The
shading is placed one pixel in from the edge of the image.
Instead of a texture description, also the option *ParentRelative* is available,
which makes the component appear as a part of its parent, e.g. totally
transparent.
Or for even more possibilities Pixmap. If pixmap texture is specified (it
might not be necessary on every occasion) the pixmap file is specified
in a separate pixmap resource.
toolbar.clock: pixmap
toolbar.clock.pixmap: clock_background.xpm
This feature might need some investigation, reports say that sometimes the
resources color and colorTo must be set and then they may not be set.
All gradiented textures are composed of two color values: the 'color' and
'colorTo' resources. When *Interlaced* is used in *Solid* mode, the 'colorTo'
resource is used to find the interlacing color.
A WORD ABOUT FONTS
------------------
We should comment about fonts before we move on to the complete component
list. fluxbox supports different options for text. These options currently
include bold, halo and shadow. To set these do this: fontname-size:options for
any of the font components in the style file. For example:
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