[openbox] few questions about theming in openbox

[David Barr]

On Sun, 2004-05-16 at 20:33 +0200, Geoffroy GIRAUX wrote:
> Hello everyone,

hi

> 
> Since I formerly used blackbox, I'm a bit familiar with the theming format, but
> I'm wondering about the reason openbox still uses that old format for themes
> file. Instead of, eh, for instance, xml :) I think that was to avoid
> re-inventing the wheel, but do you know if switching to xml is planned... Since
> the xml libs are already in use, it could be nice to drop the former parser.
> 

i think an xml format was basically deemed to be messy and awkward

> Having a quick look at some theme files and at the ml archives, i came to a
> small document to help writing themes, or at least to make things clearer (to
> myself in particular) : http://ggiraux.free.fr/openbox_elements_themes.pdf
> could you help me correct it by telling me what is wrong ?
> 

Yeah i wrote this great theme pdf and mikachu said it read like it was
written by a five year old, i was wounded by the thing, obviously, so
deleted it, i mean the nights after that comment were pretty rough for
me, i was emotionally damaged and all :) 

> btw, some questions are bothering me :
> * Does the items element really have no "text" element under it ? I think it's
> a bit strange to use menu.items.font...

i don;t know what you mean here
menu.items.text.color: #333333 exists for the menu items colour
menu.items.font: Bitstream Vera Sans:size=9 sets the font you use

> * is menu.items justification on the TODO list or not ?

it was left out by choice, maybe mikachu has plans now, i dun know

> * is there any property for the menu.bullet element ?

was, but got rid of, if i recall

> * padding is always associated with width and no other property so why not a
> simple paddingWidth property ?

i don't get what you mean here, lil' help guy?

> * I cannot find the "correct" path to set the padding.width property on window
> titles or on the menu title... I have to use a global "padding.width: 2" and
> then the window.client.padding.width to set different values. Did I miss
> anything ?

no, not if i understand you correctly

> To finish (at last), I noticed something odd : when opening an aterm window
> (with transparency) on an empty desktop, it goes to the upper left corner but
> without transparency ! As soon as I move the window a little bit or resize it,
> the term becomes transparent... If there's already an non-iconified window, the
> transparency is well set ;) Any idea of the problem ?

i have no idea

> Sorry for such a long mail and so many questions, but i wanted to write them as
> a description of the first impressions from a new openbox user
> 

long mail does test the attention span, also i have a tendency to miss
the point 

> TIA
> Geoffroy
> 

/david