I must take a break in the next month, I coded too much since December and now it’s time for a breath 
This doesn’t mean I will be offline, but don’t expect commits for Clearlooks or Murrine 
Anyway, if you’ve some questions about Murrine or you just want to take part ot the Community, simply come into the channel #murrine in Freenode and add it to your autojoin!
I’m sure that, if you will have patience, someone will help you.
Cheers,
Andrea Cimitan
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 4 Comments »
Hi Gtk+ hackers
I’m writing this post to see if someone is interested in writing a small patch to make all apps use the RGBA colormap, when available.
The Approach
I’ve discussed few days about *which could be the saner approach* in IRC with thos, ebassi, benzea etc etc.
Of course, same discussion could follow in mailing lists, if you don’t agree with that.
The approach we have in mind can be explained in that way (fell free to correct me if could be better):
- Adding a GtkSetting, something like a boolean rgba-colormap = TRUE | FALSE.
- Mapping that GtkSetting to an Xsetting.
- Reading this GtkSetting before initializing a Window, and here set a RGBA colormap if available.
Using RGBA colormaps will give the Window an alpha value, useful to draw fancy things, from transparent widgets till rounded menus/tooltips.
Patches are Welcome
Unfortunately I’m not the right man, now, to write that patch. First of all I’m really busy with exams, then I lack of basic GTK knowledge, and this could cost me days/weeks instead an hour of coding
I’ve shown you this feature request, here there’s a bugzilla bug too.
If you’re interested in a fancy eye-candy evolution for the gnome world (optional eheheh, clearlooks *is* and *will be* our rockin’ default theme), this patch is essential, since my Murrine (RGBA capable) engine is absolutely stable and ready for the masses
A Murrine’s release could follow the Gtk+ release that will have this patch in.
Comments are Welcome
If you have to contribute in a constructive way to the discussion please follow the bugzilla, otherwise feel free to comment here on my blog.
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine | 44 Comments »
Just a quick note following the previous update to Clearlooks with optional Flat Toolbars.
I’ve added the same thing in the Murrine engine, should work quite good except the menubar in RGBA mode… For the moment I just ignore shadow-type when drawing menubars in RGBA mode.
So In the next release you’ll be free to use it in this powerful Gtk Engine…
Thanks goes again to lucazade for the main concept, even if it was a simple patch
Posted in English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 9 Comments »
Hi guys, I’ve just noticed I’ve been added to the planet, so “Hello” to everybody! 
If you don’t know who is “Andrea Cimitan” (myself ehehe) I’m working on gtk-engines and gnome-themes since february 2007, I’m the author of the new Clearlooks shipped in 2.20 and of the new themes you’ve seen. Which a lot of you, guys, appreciated so much… (thanks!!!)
I’m also the author of the Murrine Engine, and I’m still working on its transparent version.
So, following my future entries on the planet (or directly from my blog), you’ll be informed on Gtk+ theming, and sometimes, on bleeding edge software (I always love to try new free software)
Cheers to everybody!
Andrea Cimitan
PS: yes I need an Hackergotchi…
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 7 Comments »
Mentre continua lo sviluppo su Murrine RGBA (a breve un post di aggiornamenti), ho aggiornato il sito di Murrine offrendo la possibilità di registrarsi ed inserire Temi!!!
Questa volta infatti ho deciso di optare per una scelta diversa dal solito sito di presentazione di un software (e ai classici forums), offrendo la possibilità di contribuire in modo diretto.
A contraddistinguersi dagli altri portali vi è il tentativo di fare un briciolo di selezione, in modo che si possano trovare subito i temi più belli senza doversi perdere nei meandri di Gnomelook…
Che dire, se siete themers e avete fatto qualcosina correte a registrarvi e uploadate i vostri lavori che andranno subito a far parte della raccolta ufficiale presente sul sito!
Posted in GTK, Italian, Metacity, Murrine, Themes | 11 Comments »
Tenuto in segreto per evitare inutili discorsi bla bla bla… c’è sempre stato un uomo dietro il suo sviluppo, che già da novembre fu contattato per tradurre i loro sogni in realtà… Questo buon uomo ero io Che quindi ho sempre saputo tutto, cosa vero cosa falso, riguardo al futuro (???) tema di Hardy Heron.
Sono stato informato che tutto è stato cancellato, e che se ne riparlerà in Hardy+1.
In ogni caso, ricordatevi che ne passa una vita tra quei mockups che si vedono in rete, e quelli “ufficiali” dell’UDS (che io ho ricevuto, anche se erano solamente sketches, ed erano datati Novembre). Si pensava ad un tema scuro come avrete sentito, ma mi sono opposto fermamente. Di ufficiale e più definitivo non ho ricevuto niente, dato che kwwii avrebbe dovuto inviarmi un suo mockup questi giorni per discuterne io e lui… e ho invece sentito la posticipazione ad Hardy+1.
L’engine che verrà utilizzato sarà comunque Murrine, che tralasciando il versante “trasparenze“, offrirà una valanga di nuove opzioni nella sua prossima release.
Chiamatelo amichevolmente Murrine++
Intanto lo sviluppo del configuratore procede bene, sono iniziati i lavori con il creatore di Tango Generator e due ragazzi Australiani
Ora servono altre forze per i plugins =)
irc.freenode.net, /j #murrine…
PS: deubuntizziamo il mondo invece!
Posted in GTK, Italian, Murrine, Themes | 21 Comments »
As in the title, I’m searching someone to create a murrine configurator to fit the new version changes.
A “call for coders”
This is the first part of the work needed before the release (I won’t release the new version until a configurator will be ready), as it is very importanto too.
Please help me I think pygtk could be enough.
Some Specs
1) what should it look like?
A window, with a treeview to select the theme to edit, and another part of the gui to edit the options.
My idea is to automatically build the gui from a schema file, that should follow this standard http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/EngineSchema
This will permit to do some fast port to other engines too
2) would it only have to edit a gtkrc?
After selecting the options, yes.
The older configurator (in python) is here: http://murrine.netsons.org/index.php?q=node/8 the author stopped the development. It’s GPL, so could be useful to re-use some of the code.
Posted in English, GTK, Murrine | 16 Comments »
Call for coders: I’m search few developers, check out the new post on this blog. I will release the new version when we’ll have a new murrine configurator (pygtk could be a simple solution)
Update 2: Complete alpha support, see GtkEntry for example and have fun
Update 1: Screenshot showing quodlibet with alpha-capable window.
Since there’s a lot of confusion on the web, in the last week I’ve seen a lot of people claiming about “lacks” of Gtk+ capabilities.
Some of them still think that Gtk+ doesn’t have RGBA support. And if it has, it’s related to Cairo rendering just for special (custom) widgets. Or it will require nasty hacks.
This is absolutely false.
And I will show you
Murrine with RGBA support
Yes, buttons have few problems with the contrast… but this is an alpha quality software!
Ehm… how we can get it?
First of all there’s the application support:
The application must set an rgba colormap (for example for the main window).
This will take 2 lines of code per widget (depending on the programming language).
Then you need the support of the Gtk+ engine:
The engine must be RGBA capable, like my development version of Murrine (not released and not available to the public, don’t ask for a release date now).
10 to 20 lines of code, and no hacks are required, just pure Gtk+ API!
And the good thing is that if you stop your composite window manager, the application will automatically looks like any other non-transparent app!
And of course a composite capable window-manager, like Compiz, future Metacity etc etc…
Conclusions
This could open a world of alpha-capable gtk+ applications with no-need of draw custom widgets, as the Gtk engine already draws them
And yes, it is FAST!
Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 104 Comments »
In uno dei prossimi numeri di una rivista su Linux (non posso rivelarne il nome per motivi di esclusiva) ci sarà un articolo/tutorial su Murrine, contenente una intervista al sottoscritto, con tanto di una mia splendida foto…
Ovviamente l’intervista non dovrà vertere solo su Murrine, ma anche sul mio lavoro in generale e su GNOME (che reputo più interessanti):
Voi che cosa chiedereste o vorreste leggere su me ed il mio lavoro?
Posted in GNOME, GTK, Italian, Murrine, Themes | 6 Comments »
Ho deciso di aprire un nuovo sito dove raccogliere i migliori contenuti per Murrine (i miei più qualcuno non ufficiale che inserirò più avanti quando avrò più tempo a disposizione) in occasione dell’avvento della futura versione stabile 1.0.
Novità
Snapshot del changelog…
0.98
===
* Added toolbarstyle with three styles: toolbarstyle= 0 flat, toolbarstyle = 1 glassy, toolbarstyle = 2 gradient
* Added sliderstyle = 1 (from email [Murrine Improvement] “sliders style options” by Andrea Antolini) to add handles on sliders
* Implemented tooltip’s drawing
* Automatically colorize scrollbar with bg[SELECTED], a new option “colorize_scrollbar = TRUE | FALSE” is used to colorize it or no
* Fixed bug with symbolic colors
* Fixed bug #438456 of gnome bugzilla
* Using const color’s variable instead adding a cast
Segnalazioni
Se avete qualche bugreport o qualche richiesta di feature aggiungetela nell’apposita sezione di bugreport sotto “The Engine”, ovviamente in inglese.
@johnny (che sarebbe quel grande che sta facendo il nuovo configuratore):
Se ce la fai ad organizzare meglio la pagina del tuo progetto sarebbe fantastico. Quando impacchetti il sorgente ti suggerisco di chiamare la cartella murrine-configurator-1.x, e rinominare l’archivio murrine-configurator-1.x.tar.bz2. Così sono gli standard… altrimenti si creano confusioni nella pacchettizzazione dei sorgenti in qualunque distribuzione.
Posted in GTK, Italian, Murrine, Themes | 30 Comments »
