Re: [ANN] Customizing GWorkspace and other apps

[Fred Kiefer]

Rubens_Septimus wrote:
> Rubens_Septimus wrote:
> > Fred Kiefer wrote:
> > > Rubens_Septimus wrote:
> > > > Hello !
> > > >
> > > > I try to understand customizing with GNUstep :
> > > >
> > > > 1°) Icons : is a clean way to customize icons in GWorkspace ? I tried to
> > > > do
> > > > so on a draft system (virtual box) before installing GNUstep on my real
> > > > computer. But it was dirty, because copying file icons in the system
> > > > domain
> > > > results in many disadvantages :
> > > > 1) Other people can't chose their icons or can't revert to the classic
> > > > ones
> > > > ;
> > > > 2) When upgrading, the customized icons will be lost.
> > > >
> > > > So I thought the User domain was the good way, but putting icons files
> > > > in
> > > > ~/GNUstep/Icons/ gives no result. Any idea how to achieve this ?
> > > There is one other way to customize icons, that is by using a mapping to 
> > > a different file name in the nsmapping.strings file. You find that file 
> > > in the GNUstep/System/Library/Images directory.
> > >
> > > > Are the 48x48 size and the tiff format the only ones supported ?
> > > You may use different sizes or formats.
> > >
> > > > 3°) How I can get windows bar to look different, for example, with
> > > > pretty
> > > > color buttons like on Mac OS X ? Is a way to do this from "defaults"
> > > > directive ?
> > > You will need to program that yourself, but it shouldn#T be to hard, if 
> > > you know what you want.
> > Thanks, Fred. I will try the nsmapping.strings. It seems cleaner than my
> > first attempt.
> > For the other suggestion, I will wait a little to learn more about
> > Objective-C and so on...
> >
> > Patrick
> Well, searching nsmappings.strings on Ubuntu only reports
> /usr/share/pixmaps/GNUstep/nsmapping.strings, but that file don't deal with
> dir or app icons...
> There is a /usr/lib/GNUstep/Images (apparently path with System are
> deprecated) but no nsmapping.strings inside. So the only way seems to make a
> backup of the old icons and copying in the shared folders the new icons.
> Did'nt find how to use mapping files.

No idea what version of GNUstep you have installed and how you installed 
it. Anyway there should be a nsmapping.strings file in the directory 
where your images are stored. And this file should have a similar 
structure to this:

NSSwitch = common_SwitchOff;
NSHighlightedSwitch = common_SwitchOn;
NSRadioButton = common_RadioOff;


This is the mapping from a logical image name to a physical. This 
mechanism was intended to provide a mapping from Next image names to 
GNUstep image files, but it could be misused for theming as well, by 
redefining one physical name into another. This wont allow you to just 
change the path to the image directory (this can only be done via 
changes to NSBundle), but enables you the redefine the used images on a 
one by one basis.