Hi, Jim (& list) -
One more thing. And another opportunity for thanking you for last night's
presentation, as well as a chance for me to give something back. The OOo
gray-background-color problem appears to be SOLVED. (See 4. below.)
For years, ever since giving up on Microsoft Windows in fact, I've been
disgusted with OOo's obduracy about "any color you like as long as it is
gray" for its application background. Twice a year or so I'd get fed up
and spawn a flurry of Google inquiries; never with any satisfaction,
although every Google would yield a number of posts from other people
wondering "How the $*#&@*$ do you get OOo to listen to your .gtkrc?"
(and "How the ^$*#&@*$^ does anyone get the Gnome developers to listen,
at all?)... Well, it's nice to have company. :)
Last night you showed off *your* OOo, and it WASN'T GRAY. So as soon as
I got home I did it again:
1. Looked into OOo's current Tools|Options|Appearance dialogue
(and found the same colors-for-text etc. that we've all found
every time previously, and as we've always found previously,
2. Spawned a flurry of Google inquiries, and found (again):
o that we're not alone -- a lot of people hate gray
o quite a few people HATE gray
o a lot of people feel that Gnome doesn't listen
3. THIS TIME, I also found:
o The behavior of OOo's background (and icon styles, for that
matter) varies with window manager
o In particular, users of the Gnome/Evolution/etc. heavyweight
desktop environment seem to get colored OOo app backgrounds
OK.
o But other window managers (I use Fluxbox) are out of luck.
All of the other applications I use seem to understand and
behave properly, setting themselves up in accordance with
~/.gtkrc. It's only OOo which doesn't.
o One "solution" a user had found was a way to fake GTK into
thinking that Evolution was running, then OOo would read
.gtkrc and behave.
o Another "solution" found by another user involved compiling
a short program with gcc, and faking an "X atom" (whatever
that is).
4. And finally, I found:
xprop -root -format GNOME_SM_PROXY 8i -set GNOME_SM_PROXY 1
This is a command to issue at the bash prompt. Then start OOo...
Eureka! It seems to work. OOo now matches my desktop theme.
The unspeakable gray is gone!
To which I say Thank You, Jim -- for giving me one more kick to find
a fix. As well as for the far more substantial stuff about how to
actually use OOo, and organize workflow and styles, which will REALLY
help in the months to come.
-Bill
___________________________________________________________________
P.S. I haven't a clue what the magic "xprop" command actually does.
It doesn't seem to match the xprop man page, for one thing (e.g.,
my man page doesn't document the -format switch -- is it the same
as -f switch perhaps?). On the other hand, I DON'T CARE.
Incidentally, the post containing this magic elixir isn't new.
It's been on the Web since 2004. So it had to have been there
during each of my previous Google flurries. I needed Jim's
attitude-reset, I guess!
For convenience, the thread containing the X "atom" fix:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=26114
The thread containg the magic xprop command above:
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=4744
The essential clip:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 7:38 am
With KDE 3.x and Gnome 2.2 OpenOffice changes the widget color to
the defined theme or style color. But this doesn't work for any
other windowmanager. But here comes the solution for all OpenOffice
users with other windowmanagers (thanks to Christian Lohmaier):
First you have to set your color in Gnome or via gtkrc editing.
Then you have to fool your OpenOffice so it thinks that a Gnome
session is running. This is possible with the following command:
xprop -root -format GNOME_SM_PROXY 8i -set GNOME_SM_PROXY 1
Now you can start OpenOffice and it will show the same color
settings as in your gtkrc.
OpenOffice needs the program getstyle-gnome (which is part of OOo)
and the whole process is really hard to understand, but for all of
you who want to know more here is the URL of the thread:
http://gsl.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=820729&listName=dev
Good luck!
Thomas
--------------------------------------------------------------------
For chuckles, a clip from the "want to know more" thread cited above:
> >Is there any way to fool OOo? Making OOo think it is running KDE
> >and let it parse the config-files (kdeglobals IIRC)?
> >Or make it think it's running gnome and make use of the
> >window-property?
>
> KDE is not so easy; [...]
>
> Gnome is easier; Gnome is assumed to be running if the root
> window has either a property "GNOME_SM_PROXY" or
> "NAUTILUS_DESKTOP_WINDOW_ID" (which certainly is a hack but there
> is no "official" solution of identifying a running gnome).
Certainly a hack. (!) In my experience, the Gnome Standard Answer has
always been "why don't you just learn to like it the way we've done it?"
Hacks, indeed. We're Gnome and You're Not. (Don't let me get started
on the perniciously abysmal Gnome filechooser... :)
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