Where to start making themes?

[commodore]

I'd like to make themes for gnome and KDE. I have searched up stuff on google but I don't find anything useful. I want to know whats gtk and metacity, what progies do I need and everything else. I just don't know where to start. Any helpful links?

[bvc]

If any links are dead sorry....this is quite old and from what I've posted on 2 other forums

Metacity Theme Editor
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.p...9400&highlight=
general (know the environment)
http://www.gnomefiles.org/
http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=114

SmoothEngine
http://gnome.org/~thos/Smooth-Docs/
http://www.unit-e.cc/~ajgenius/Gnome/Theme...id=SmoothEngine
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smooth-engine/
http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=114
http://web.subpop.net/art/smoothgnome/

GTK
http://www.unit-e.cc/~ajgenius/Gnome/Theme...s/?id=GTKThemes

Metacity
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/m...ity-themes.html

ICONS
http://www.unit-e.cc/~ajgenius/Gnome/Theme.../?id=IconThemes
http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=385
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.p...hlight=standard
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.p...hlight=standard
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.4/gtk...tock-Items.html

Help other than here
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=20

Tinkering and hacking others themes is necessary to really get it. Docs are very limited. So get stuff and hack! That's what I did.
http://gnome-look.org/
http://art.gnome.org/
http://www.themedepot.org/

you need images for pixmap themes and practice?
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=1
the .wba extension is seen as a zip type by file-roller

Errors
Whether gtk, metacity, or icon theming, errors may or may not be printed in vt1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1) depending on the distro you use. Mandrake used to, but doesn't seem to anymore. Debian's and Fedora do. You can easily get the errors by running
gnome-theme-manager
in an X terminal (Gnome Terminal, Aterm, Eterm, Xterm, rxvt etc....).

Metacity
Metacity has a nice tool. The
metacity-theme-viewer
Run it from an X terminal;
metacity-theme-viewer name_of_metacity_theme
[example]metacity-theme-viewer d3a
and you can find out how fast it loads and errors pointing to any problems with loading the theme. It opens a gui to show you all the different aspects of the theme.
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk+/docs/wid...try.txt?rev=1.5
##################

Scalable Vector Graphics
This is what I'm currently interested in and researching. Instead of pixmap, you can make svg/gtk and metacity themes, and of course icon themes.
http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/
http://www.inkscape.org/ (has a built in tutorial)
http://www.sodipodi.com/
http://programmer-art.org/?page=inkscape

oh, and GIB
http://gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=385
if the downlaod isn't available I have them here
http://kwh.kernow-gb.com/~bvc/theme/icons/gib/

[commodore]

But what do gtk and metacity and all kinds of other stuff actually mean?

[JDay]

Metacity is the default GNOME window manager. For the purposes of theming it's what draws the title bar and the window border. GTK is GNOME's widget toolkit. It handles all the buttons, menus, forms, etc. in the application.

[commodore]

Metacity is the default GNOME window manager. For the purposes of theming it's what draws the title bar and the window border. GTK is GNOME's widget toolkit. It handles all the buttons, menus, forms, etc. in the application.

Now that was what I wanted to know. Thank you.

But does anyone know anything about KDE theming?