Murrine needs a Laptop, Status of RGBA, Murrine Projects 16 November, 2008
I’ve sad news for you all.
This year I will be at the university during the weeks and, since I don’t have a laptop, I’m actually forced to stop the development of Murrine, Clearlooks and all other projects in which I put my effort. I hope you can help me to not have to stop working on Gtk+ software.
Please Help Me
At the same time, being a student, I don’t have the means on my own to buy a laptop, even a cheaper one. So I am asking for your help by means of a donation. Only with a laptop I can continue to organize the work needed for a fully functional system-wide transparent RGBA mode in upcoming GNOME release as well as following your requests and adding features.
So, if you enjoyed my work these past years and you want to keep these things alive, or if you just want to give me your personal *thank you for creating Murrine* or *thanks for the Clearlooks restyling* please consider a donation. All funds received will be used only for supporting the development of my free software projects.
I don’t know how much I can achieve from this, netbooks start at 400$ and if I get more I can hack on more advanced effects 
I’ve opened a new section in the Murrine’s website, Feature Requests, where the most popular features could become a reality when I can code again. It is like my thank you for your donations. In that way you’re sure you’re donation will be used to the development. And after donating you can see some of your dreams implemented 
By the time I’m writing the post there are seven pending features:
- Add Gradient Glow
- Theme the Focus Ring
- Add Arrow Style
- Add Progressbar Styles
- Implement Slider Background
- Scrollbar Handle Styles
- Theme the panels
But these are just a few, with your donations I can implement them and what you like!
I would like to thank everyone will help me.
Status of the Gtk+ RGBA support
For the guys who missed my first RGBA revolutionary post, they could see how a Gtk+ engine could be transparent
Enabling RGBA inside applications was a test, but the real goal is to set RGBA system-wide, so every Gtk+ interface will have this channel and all of its benefits (not only transparency, but also rounded menus, fancy tooltips, notifications and visual effects…).
- To achieve this there was a bug in the system tray which was fixed in trunk few days ago, and another patch pending in gnome-panel that needs approval.
- Got it, the next step is to write a small patch for Gtk+ in order to give the user a xsetting or an environment variable to enable/disable the RGBA visual/colormap. There was a discussion months ago, I ask Gtk+ devs for their opinion on this topic.
- Reached this point, we need to start testing applications, and submit patches to the applications that behaves in a wrong way (for example Gnumeric or Abiword), or poke Xorg guys if we will find new Xorg bugs.
If everything is ok, GNOME will be fully capable of using RGBA colormaps for its themes (wow a rounded gnome-panel!)
Summary of Murrine Projects
One of my dreams is to involve more and more people, and coordinate a group of talented themers/artists with the common goal of creating visually-satisfying and high-quality themes using and improving Murrine engine to its best.
- Murrine: Since the latest stable release (0.53.1) I’ve rewritten the code two times, I’ve fixed bugs, I’ve simplified the code improving the rendering speed, I’ve added a huge number of new options and now, thanks to the Clearlooks style code it is really modular and supports different styles like Glossy, Classic, Gummy, Inverted for Clearlooks. For example: writing a new style for next Ubuntu releases is possible without a rewrite, I just need to add the new drawing code, choose a name for the gtkrc option, and map it If we ever had released a 1.0, this would definitely qualify for a 2.0.
- Website: First of all don’t forget to register to the Murrine Website, a place where you can easily submit your themes, send your mockups, request your features, download per-application RGBA patches, ask questions to themers, vote your favourite contents! More sections could be added, email me if you have an idea.
- Murrine-Themes: From September I’ve asked lucazade to start developing a high quality set of themes for the next-gen Murrine release, using options to achieve original looks while providing an usable everyday visual experience. This project, called murrine-themes and hosted on launchpad, it is still far from being high-quality, but I’m sure that in his hands and in your hands (if you want to participate) it will be a must-have complement to the engine.
- Contest: The best themes published in the Murrine Website could be part of Murrine-Themes!
- Murrine Configurator: Two Australian guys started developing a new kind of configurator, hosted on launchpad, compatible with every engine, that will make Murrine theming fun as a video game If you are interested in joining the development or starting a configurator optimized for Murrine (it will be better of course, seen the high number of options), ask and you’ll be part of this great theming crew.
- Bazaar Playground: Murrine is first of all free software, why don’t play with the source code? There’s also a launchpad mirror, where you could play with your own branches! And why not, good modifications could be merged!
If you want to talk directly with the few guys that populates the chat, if you want to keep track of the development, don’t forget to join! We are (well, there are just few guys actually) on Freenode, channel #murrine. Add it to your autojoin!
Status of the Official GNOME Theming Projects
The “Clearlooks restyling” you’ve seen from 2.19 was done to achieve an enjoyable professional look, while being original (Clearlooks is not a copy of OS-X or Vista). A theme that could be used for years without getting annoyed
I don’t have in mind another restyle for Clearlooks, but there are a lot of minor things that require always a bit of work: starting with bugfixing to some gnome-panel theming (which will require more work). Two things that were planned for 2.24 are a compact theme (for small screens) and a dark theme for Clearlooks. I would really like to help more Benzea on this side, he is totally praiseworthy.
I would like to provide another good set of free wallpapers, at least in the gnome-themes-extras package.
Another thing in mind, but I won’t personally code for this, is colorscheme support for Gtk+ themes! You choose a theme, click on the color section of the appearance capplet, and select through a combobox or a listview the colorscheme you like. As well as storing a new one.
Donations are important to keep me inside the GNOME Art Team.
Spread the Voice
This post is really important because it’s a summary of the future Gtk+ theming, where I consider Murrine as a great tool for artists and themers. Please spread the voice on Digg and other social websites so everyone could learn from this.
Posted in Donations, English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes |
16 November, 2008 alle 14:39
I suggest you to use Pledgie on your blog. It will show a widget that says how much money people donated to reach your goal, like the one you can see on wikipedia in these days.
It’s a little thing but it helps to push people with the donations.
16 November, 2008 alle 14:55
Why don’t you get a part time job at Canonical as artwork developer? I think you should and you’ll get a laptop from them
16 November, 2008 alle 15:04
why don’t put some google adv on your website? they could help you to find some money
16 November, 2008 alle 15:33
Where are you located? I might be able to get you a laptop. Oldish, but perfectly good.
16 November, 2008 alle 17:17
Yeah, your work’s pretty important, maybe Canoncial will help you =)
Hopefully I can restore my PayPal password and send you some money..
16 November, 2008 alle 20:44
Good luck. I hope it helps somehow.
17 November, 2008 alle 10:07
I like your stuff so I hope you get there, I’ve made a small donation.
18 November, 2008 alle 9:28
I know it’s too late, right know… but why didn’t you propose yourself for the Google SoC 2008, as lots of people did (and I saw many projects, I consider less interesting, being accepted) and/or for a Canonical Ltd. – as someone else said – or Red Hat, as well as Novell partnership — like Jakub Steiner, who works on similiar projects? I mean: I’ll do this way, if only I reached your high skill level… I know you made a default theme for GNOME and your engine/themes are included on the official Ubuntu repository (and not just them)… so, it won’t be hard for you to obtain something! Although here, in Italy, it’s quite impossible to do so. Don’t know if you’ve already done it… but I suggest you to try it out.
PS — Fa un certo effetto scrivere in inglese con un Italiano… eheheh…
19 November, 2008 alle 14:37
Donated € 10. Keep up the good work and get a nice one.
Seeing how much you’ve already been donated would be a plus (at least IMHO) ;-).
20 November, 2008 alle 22:48
Andrea, do you still need donations? Or have already accepted the notebook Gaël Varoquaux offered to give you, or do you intend to ask Canonical as is suggested here? I’d like to know before I donate.
I can donate you money, but possibly I could send you my notebook, I’ve uploaded it’s specifications here – http://www.alexandervanloon.nl/amilo_pi_1505_specs.pdf – if this is what you are looking for, lease let me know if you are interested?
19 December, 2008 alle 20:42
So hoch much do you already got? Or even a notebook from someone? Tell us, i do not donate before we know =)
20 January, 2009 alle 19:25
Thank you so much for this, it might help me improve my Windows 7 GUI for Ubuntu by making the metacity themes transparent
2 February, 2009 alle 17:47
RGBA should be done as gtk-module (like globalmenu(mac menu for gnome) )
3 March, 2009 alle 9:40
Hello webmaster
I would like to share with you a link to your site
write me here preonrelt@mail.ru
12 March, 2009 alle 22:44
Just out of curiosity: will the rgba features be included in whatever sometime soon? or will there be an option to install it from the repos? I’m asking because I stumbled upon your rgba-murrine pages and I’m not quite sure how it would need to be implemented. (like, via a theme engine like murrine, via applicaton-based settings, via a global-setting for gtk/gnome).
No matter what’s the answer: keep up the good work!
6 November, 2009 alle 14:17
Hi Friends,
I have done the work of providing transparancy to Gtk windows using above method. It’s working fine If I use only murrine theme.
But is there any way of modifing inside Gtk library itself without using murrine theme. I want the transparancy to my Gtk widgets(application) without using Murrine theme(murrine theme engine).
Your suggestion and help will be helpful.