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smirnoff76
November 5th, 2008, 07:22 AM
Hi everyone I am running 8.10 and am having an issue when I apply a theme, I get a message saying that the theme will not look as intended as the required GTK+ engine is not installed.

I have installed all the engines I can in synaptic however theis does not appear to have made a difference?

Does anyone have any idea's on what I can do to sort this and what file and entry within the theme I need to check to see to see what engine is required?

Thanks

DUDE_2000
November 5th, 2008, 07:25 AM
Any theme in particular?

coolen
November 5th, 2008, 11:39 AM
The theme may require a metacity/icon theme. I noticed that when attempting to theme post Intrepid.

smirnoff76
November 5th, 2008, 01:22 PM
The theme was blackfate http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/BlackFate?content=84344 from this link here.

You are right it does have a metacity theme to it.

I haven't actually used / installed metacity yet is it pretty straight forward to use?

acegik
November 5th, 2008, 06:07 PM
im also having the exact problem and and i dont no if is for the same eason but when i have compiz activated the minimize, maximize and close buttoms dissapear if u know how to solve plz let me know i've been lookimg for the answer in google and nothing. thanx

coolen
November 6th, 2008, 06:50 PM
Compiz is able to use Metacity themes. Simply locate the required theme, install it, and it should work.

coolen
November 6th, 2008, 06:52 PM
My desktop machine seems to be suffering a similar issue. When I hover over the minimise/close buttons, the window border goes white. It fixes itself after a while, usually after I move the mouse (I thought at one point it was when the cursor left that window, but no dice).

Works fine on my laptop, however, using the same driver but newer card. What graphics card do you have?

hictio
November 6th, 2008, 09:28 PM
Hi everyone I am running 8.10 and am having an issue when I apply a theme, I get a message saying that the theme will not look as intended as the required GTK+ engine is not installed.

I have installed all the engines I can in synaptic however theis does not appear to have made a difference?

Does anyone have any idea's on what I can do to sort this and what file and entry within the theme I need to check to see to see what engine is required?

Thanks

I had a similar error message displayed when applied the Mira (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Mira?content=89831) theme.

envoys
November 6th, 2008, 09:32 PM
im also having the exact problem and and i dont no if is for the same eason but when i have compiz activated the minimize, maximize and close buttoms dissapear if u know how to solve plz let me know i've been lookimg for the answer in google and nothing. thanx

I am having the exact same issue, lost my minimize, maximize and close buttons completely, its a pain since its something we're always used to having, if anyone knows how to fix this, please, please, please help us!!!

envoys
November 7th, 2008, 02:47 PM
I am having the exact same issue, lost my minimize, maximize and close buttons completely, its a pain since its something we're always used to having, if anyone knows how to fix this, please, please, please help us!!!

Ok so I did some fooling around and changed visual effects to none and I got my buttons back but awn won't work and soon as I start compiz from terminal my buttons disappear...any thoughts guys? Also changing visual effects to high or whatever it does some stuff than gives an error but I can't recall hat it says but after it reverts to none and my toolbars back.... Using mac4lin 1.0rc theme.

coolen
November 8th, 2008, 03:03 AM
Perhaps you could try Emerald instead. You'll need to install it, along with CCSM, then change it in Window Decorations.

I think Mac4Lin has an emerald theme, too.

envoys
November 8th, 2008, 09:42 PM
I will try that and report back. Thanks :)

almahtar
November 10th, 2008, 09:04 PM
Open up Synaptic and install all the gtk2-engines-[whatever] packages. Should take up an extra 25 megs or so, but when it's done all your themes will work properly unless they are based on some engine that's not in the repository, and those are pretty rare.

Let me know how you fare.

Ivo Moelans
November 11th, 2008, 03:11 AM
Hmm, not exactly. A lot of themes use the following style (in the gtkrc-file of the theme):


style "unstyle"
{
engine ""
{
}
}

The style "unstyle" is meant to prevent Sodipodi from crashing while opening the Object-Style dialog. As you can see the engine ""'s are empty. And that is what Appearance Preferences is complaining about: "This theme will not look as intended because the required GTK+ theme engine '' is not installed.". The solution is simple. Fill the "" with a 'known' (i.e. installed) engine, e.g. pixmap, so that the code looks like this:


style "unstyle"
{
engine "pixmap"
{
}
}

You can find the gtkrc-file in /home/your-name/.themes/Name-Of-Your-Theme/gtk-2.0/. It is a simple text file which can be opened and edited with e.g. gedit (Applications→Accessories→Text Editor).

Hope this helps.

Edit:

If you still get an error look also in other *rc files in the same directory. Use the Search→Find... (or Ctrl+F) function of Text Editor and look for engine "".

siddug
November 16th, 2008, 07:00 PM
Wonderful! The above solution of editing gtkrc worked for me :).

Thanks!

envoys
November 17th, 2008, 08:22 PM
Worked for me aswell! Thanks!

IceReaver75
November 18th, 2008, 07:12 PM
I have installed a theme and have filled in all the engines in the gtkrc-file and it still is complaining about gtk+ theme engine "" isn't installed. I'm not sure what to try now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ivo Moelans
November 19th, 2008, 12:38 AM
A (remote) possibility is that the empty engine line is in another rc-file. Are there any other files in the gtk-2.0-subdirectory, like e.g. panelrc, scrollbar-rc or something like that? Sometimes theme authors split up the gtkrc-file. In these cases the gtkrc-file itself mentions the subsidiary files (at the beginning or at the end) like e.g. include "panelrc"

What is the name of the theme, or better: could you upload the file (attach in your response) here? I would gladly take a look at it.

IceReaver75
November 19th, 2008, 01:22 AM
Its the vision theme from gnome-look.org which could be found here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/vision+(codename+inspiration)?content=80064

I'm not sure what I'm really missing here. There are other rc's there but I checked those ones also and there are no missing engine entries that I can see. Thank you for your help.

Ivo Moelans
November 19th, 2008, 01:35 AM
Look at lines 2053 → 2057 in the gtkrc-file. There is the style "unstyle" in my version of this theme.

IceReaver75
November 19th, 2008, 02:07 AM
Yeah I saw that and changed those lines to this:

style "unstyle"
{
engine "pixmap"
{}
}

figuring that would fix it but it still says that the theme engine "" is not installed. That's why I'm kind of confused.

Edit: I figured it out the was an empty engine on line 136 in the panel.rc. Edited that and no more complaining. Thanks again for your help. Now if I can just figure out how to fix the folder icons from reverting to gnome on some icon sets I'd be happy.

Ivo Moelans
November 19th, 2008, 02:42 AM
That is determined by the index.theme file. You need super user privileges for editing this file. But it's not difficult.

1. Open the terminal and type sudo gedit. Give your password when asked for.
2. Gedit (Text Editor) will now open with super user privileges.
3. With Open File navigate to /home/your-name/.themes/Name-Of-Your-Theme/ and open index.theme.
4. There are two sections [Desktop Entry] and [X-GNOME-Metatheme]. In this last section an icon theme and a cursor theme a.o. can be defined. Simply change the name after IconTheme= to the one you want or delete the whole line: the theme will then use whatever icons are used a that moment.

If that was not your question: some icon themes lack a few or many icons, depending on their age. Gnome is the most complete icon theme and is the default for the gnome system. It is regularly revised and completed. So a lot of icon themes revert to Gnome icon theme for the icons they themselves lack.
You can fix this: the simplest way is to copy both the defective icon theme and the Gnome icon theme (/usr/share/icons/) to your Desktop and compare them. For some icon themes that have but a few icons lacking this is easy, for others it is a lot of work. If nevertheless you would try to do this, I will gladly give some tips (in that case give me the name of the icon theme), but it is much simpler to search for good and recent icon themes on e.g. http://www.gnome-look.org/.

IceReaver75
November 19th, 2008, 03:19 AM
The icon problem I have is I'm trying to use the nouveXT-1.6 icons. All the icons will change but the folder icons. The folder icons will revert to the gnome gray instead of the new ones in the icon set. Hopefully that makes some sense. Thats what I'm trying to figure out why all icons will change but the folder icons.

Ivo Moelans
November 19th, 2008, 03:49 AM
I found this complete icon theme: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/NouveXT+Icons+by+Drake?content=76063

The author states:
Description:
Uses the Icons from NouveXT 1.6 where possible, the missing icons, e.g. for devices are taken from 2.2
Changelog:
Based on NouveXT 1.6 and 2.2. Thx


Seems someone has already taken care of your problem.

IceReaver75
November 19th, 2008, 04:20 AM
Ivo - Thanks for all your help with this. I really appreciate it. I'm fairly new to Linux only using it for a few months. I try to figure things out on my own from reading the forums and google but sometimes just get stuck with some things. I have learned some new things from your help. I have messed my install up many times from trying things but thats the result of trying things. Its all trial and error. Thanks again

Ivo Moelans
November 19th, 2008, 04:32 AM
You're welcome. We all learned by trial and error and reading and asking. I know I still do every day.

TekNullOG
November 27th, 2008, 11:56 PM
Hmm, not exactly. A lot of themes use the following style (in the gtkrc-file of the theme):


style "unstyle"
{
engine ""
{
}
}

The style "unstyle" is meant to prevent Sodipodi from crashing while opening the Object-Style dialog. As you can see the engine ""'s are empty. And that is what Appearance Preferences is complaining about: "This theme will not look as intended because the required GTK+ theme engine '' is not installed.". The solution is simple. Fill the "" with a 'known' (i.e. installed) engine, e.g. pixmap, so that the code looks like this:


style "unstyle"
{
engine "pixmap"
{
}
}

You can find the gtkrc-file in /home/your-name/.themes/Name-Of-Your-Theme/gtk-2.0/. It is a simple text file which can be opened and edited with e.g. gedit (Applications→Accessories→Text Editor).

Hope this helps.

Awesome! Thank you. This solved my problem with one of the Aero themes.

Cheers

abelthorne
November 30th, 2008, 12:02 PM
The style "unstyle" is meant to prevent Sodipodi from crashing while opening the Object-Style dialog. As you can see the engine ""'s are empty. And that is what Appearance Preferences is complaining about: "This theme will not look as intended because the required GTK+ theme engine '' is not installed.". The solution is simple. Fill the "" with a 'known' (i.e. installed) engine, e.g. pixmap, so that the code looks like this:
Of course it will prevent the message to appear, but will the hack for Sodipodi still work ? I.e. is it the style "unstyle" that prevents the problem with Sodipodi, or the specific fact that the engine name is empty ?

Ivo Moelans
November 30th, 2008, 05:40 PM
As far as I understand the style as such does nothing: it simply tells sodipodi to not use the style this widget would otherwise be using. The brackets where otherwise code would be for a certain behavior are empty, so the style in fact is 'saying' something like 'use engine "pixmap" on nothing and use nothing to theme sodipodi'.
So, yes, it still will prevent sodipodi from crashing.