Dear friends: As the owner of the new xfce-new mailing-list (actually a Yahoo group) for us ordinary users, I have received a number of messages from newbies and even from experienced users asking for help with XFCE's Setup, Palette color scheme (the eight color rectangles). Each of these rectangles refers to a certain component in XFCE. While the User's Guide (the big I at the extreme right of the XFCE toolbar/panel) does provide the all-important hint that each rectangle refers to a component, it does not go beyond it. When I and at least one other person asked for a clarification and for specific instructions concerning these components on XFCE's official xfce mailing list, we were ridiculed and insulted by one senior member of the XFCE list. When no support was forthcoming from the list owner, I quit the list and formed xfce-new for the rest of us. Once again, if you wish to join, send me your email address and I'll add you to the xfce-new list on yahoogroups.com. The default XFCE desktop is pretty boring, as I am sure many of you will agree. So I tried to customize it. And it is remarkably customizable. Before asking for help on the color scheme issue in XFCE, I spent hours, and, I mean, literally hours trying out every option, every color component and rectange, each time opening up Netscape and other applications to test my guess (since that's all we have to go on). I finally designed an XFCE desktop that, I think, may serve as a template for many of you. Here is my precise color scheme along with the backdrop (which you may, of course, change as you please). First, for my background (left-click on desktop, choose backdrop, then Browse), I selected the first of the Toulouse pictures. Very lovely. Now, in XFCE's Setup, Palette, first check off "Apply colors to all applications". Then, click on each of the eight color rectangles and select the following number scheme for each of the three colors options, namely, red, green and blue. Ignore the top three options. Here goes: Now, click on Load and select your palette texture. You can add even more palette textures by downloading a file from http://www.xfce.org and installing the "Argon" textures. For my purposes, in order to harmonize everything, I selected SUNNY. Then, opening up each color rectange in turn, please set the color scheme as follows: 1) Red: 1.00 Green: 1.00 Blue: 1.00 Color: White 2) Red: .00 Green: .71 Blue: 1.00 Color: Light blue. 3) White. See no. 1 above. 4) Red: .00 Green: .62 Blue: 1.00 Color: Light blue. A little darker than no. 2 5) Color: White. See no. 1 above. 6) Red: .25 Green: .38 Blue: .80 Color: Dark blue. 7) Red: .73 Green: .16 Blue: .25 Color: Dark red. 8) Red: .14 Green: .60 Blue: .81 Color: Turquoise or green-blue. Try these out and see what you get. But please try them just as I presented them. That's the big problem with the color scheme in XFCE. It's like hunt & peck in typing. In their infinite wisdom, the powers that be at XFCE have decided to keep the mysteries of the color scheme to themselves. So, let's do the best we can on our own. This is my desktop. Perhaps you might wish to share yours with others. By the way, one of the unusually and very pleasant effects of my backdrop/texture/color scheme is that you get white text on blue menu backgrounds everywhere, including in Netscape. A very lovely, professional, modenistic effect not even available, I believe, in KDE. One last thing: Make sure you turn off IN KDE the option under Style to allow KDE's style to apply to all applications, because in Mandrake this will override your XFCE settings. After unchecking this option in KDE, and before creating your desktop in XFCE, you might wish to delete the .gtkrc file in you home directory $/home/user/>rm .gtkrc (Please note the period before .gtkrc). Exit XFCE and log back in. You can now start from scratch. Still, strictly KDE applications will still have the color background that you have chosen for it in KDE. To achieve some harmony, I chose the BlueSlate color scheme in KDE for KDE. That's pretty close to my color scheme for XFCE. I guess nothing is perfect. Once again, if you wish to join xfce-new, just send me your email address and I'll gladly add you. You can also do it directly from within http://www.yahoogroups.com by joining Yahoo and then selecting xfce-new, but it seems a bit complicated to me and it may be easier just to let me sign you up directly. Yours, Benjamin -- Sher's Russian Web http://www.websher.net Benjamin and Anna Sher [EMAIL PROTECTED]
