8.10 GTK+ Theme Issues

[coolen]

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]

I will try that and report back. Thanks

[almahtar]

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]

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]

Wonderful! The above solution of editing gtkrc worked for me .

Thanks!

[envoys]

Worked for me aswell! Thanks!

[IceReaver75]

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]

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]

Its the vision theme from gnome-look.org which could be found here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.p...?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]

Look at lines 2053 → 2057 in the gtkrc-file. There is the style "unstyle" in my version of this theme.