MetaTheme is a project dedicated to unification of appearance between different graphics toolkits (currently GTK2, QT and Java).

The program is designed as a thin layer between toolkits and theme engines, creating unified API by which each theme engine can draw. The result is that every application uses the same code for drawing, making the appearance same across different applications. MetaTheme also adjusts behaviour a bit, so the overall effect of unification is impressive.

Some applications have their own toolkits which are used only by themselves. Cardinal examples of such applications are Mozilla, Firefox and OpenOffice. They provide support for pixmap themes, and popular themes exists for them. Though as they are pixmap based, you can't easily change how they look. Particularly, it's quite impossible to change color theme. Not everyone likes the default. Also, the behaviour of these toolkits is unaffected, so the application may behave differently than other applications.

There is planned support for Firefox (and maybe Mozilla too) in future. For OpenOffice, you can at least try the KDE integration build of it.

Official site: http://www.metatheme.org/

General:

• GLib 2.0 or later

For GTK2 support and configuration tools:

• GTK2 2.2 or later

For QT/KDE support:

• QT 3.3
• KDE 3.2 or later

For Java/SWING support:

• JDK 1.5

For development:

• Autoconf 2.13
• Automake 1.4 (or similar versions)

• Unpack the archive somewhere in your home directory.

• Run './configure'. You may need to configure some environment varibles: CFLAGS="-fPIC" LIBS="-ldl -lX11"

• Run 'make'.

• Run 'make install' as root.

• Run 'metatheme-install' in terminal as an ordinary user. This will activate MetaTheme in all supported toolkits (except Java, which is enabled at previous step).

• Make sure there is no other gtkrc file active. If yes, disable it or it will interfere with MetaTheme.

• Restart your session.

For GNOME users:

• Don't change themes or controls in GNOME Theme Manager. Only window borders and icons. For deactivation see the next section.

Configuration:

• Run 'mt-config' to start MetaTheme configuration tool. Please beware that the on-the-fly applying of changes is still experimental.

Optional:

• You can use the kde/*.kcsrc files for color settings of some window decorations in KDE.

• Run 'metatheme-install -u' as an ordinary user. This should deactivate MetaTheme in all supported toolkits and set safe defaults.
• Restart your session.

• MetaTheme might have significant impact to stability of runned programs.

• You may have problems with on-the-fly switching between MetaTheme and other themes. Although it may work for you, it is not recommended now.

• Font and color settings are obtained from the '~/.metatheme/config' file, overriding any default settings in particular toolkit.

• If you have invisible text in XChat's input box, you will need to disable the 'Use the Text box font and colors' option in Preferences -> Interface -> Input box. Probably you have to restart it after doing that.

• Currently, MetaTheme is aimed towards KDE, although it doesn't directly depend on it.

• If you have different font sizes in QT and GTK applications, check if you have the same DPI value for both axes. You can check it by running this command:

  $ xdpyinfo | grep resolution

• Antialiased fonts in Java can be enabled by passing parameter "-Dswing.aatext=true" when running Java application. Also, please note, that Java can use only TrueType fonts.

E-mail: metatheme-dev@lists.advel.cz Martin Dvorak jezek2@advel.cz

IRC: jezek2 at FreeNode (#freedesktop.org) jezek2 at IRCNet