[SHR,FSO] Serenity theme for illume

David Reyes Samblas Martinez david at tuxbrain.com
Mon Mar 30 11:25:14 CEST 2009


unable to untar the file
root at om-gta02:~# tar -xzvf serenity-0.2.tar.gz
tar: invalid gzip magic


2009/3/29 Joel Newkirk <freerunner at newkirk.us>:
> I know it's been a few weeks since I said I was going to try to get
> this out, I apologize.
>
> I've released what is essentially an alpha test for the Serenity
> theme, therefore named serenity-0.2.  It's incomplete, and may be broken
> in some ways I've not seen yet.  Comments/criticisms/advice on
> structural and functional aspects are welcome, those on visual style
> should be limited to points of inconsistency with the rest of the theme
> or problems like scaling. (specifically, if you don't like the look of
> the theme that's fine, but don't bother with comments like "I don't like
> dark themes" or what-not - the point is to present the theme to those
> interested, and hopefully discuss improvements/fixes, not take a poll
> of the appeal)
>
> Note that this is just an Illume/Enlightenment theme, NOT Elementary or
> any specific apps.  (like Paroli, Zhone, SHR phonegui-efl)  I'm working
> on those as well, however.
>
> I use it currently with SHR-unstable and FSO-MS5.1.  You can download
> it from http://newkirk.us/om/serenity-0.2.tar.gz and extract - it opens
> to a folder named serenity, which
> contains usr/share/enlightenment/data/themes/serenity.edj
> and usr/share/enlightenment/data/config/serenity folder holding a few
> files. Copy themes/serenity.edj and the config/serenity folder
> to /usr/share/enlightement, then you can select it in Illume Settings
> under Look->Theme, select 'System' at the top-left to see themes
> installed globally. (/usr/share/...)  NOTE: Wallpaper and Theme, at
> least, may segfault if you are using Software_16 rendering.
>
> Once I'm satisfied that it doesn't break anything, and all the
> main elements are rethemed, I'll release it as an ipk.  (of course, at
> any time if someone wants to they can extract the serenity.edj file and
> have their way with it - anyone who wants to enhance or alter it
> in any way is free to do so, so long as 'simple' alterations like
> changing some images files retain a credit that the new theme is "based
> on Serenity by Joel Newkirk" - 'major alterations' or extraction of some
> portion of Serenity to use in another theme is fine without attribution)
>
>
>
> What I'm doing:
>
> Start with Illume and default themes (anything not defined in illume.edj
> will 'fall through' to default.edj, like battery and clock) basically
> renaming illume as serenity, and merge more groups up from default
> (battery, clock, desktop icon, etc) then work to simplify the
> structure (graphically and visually - most significantly, making icons
> two images instead of about eight images each) and shift toward the
> desired visual appearance.
>
> Ordinary buttons are translucent white, though on the black default
> background they appear grey. Selected/pressed buttons are an
> 'openmoko-orange' tinted rendition of the same translucent button
> image. Icons are just icon image at rest, are translucent white when
> highlighted by keyboard or mouseover (IE dragging on FR) and
> translucent orange when clicked/tapped.
>
> Battery applet is the green one from Illume, but narrower.  Tapping it
> displays the battery percentage and time overlay.  GSM applet is the
> same as Illume but colorized red/yellow/green based on signal quality,
> with carrier name above signal. Clock applet is more heavily
> altered, displaying digital time with date below it.  Keyboard has been
> visually/structurally simplified - removing two transparent overlays
> from each key - resulting in (for me at least) significantly faster
> keyboard response.  (and About:Theme is reworked, though you can only
> see it if you enable the 'Start' Top Shelf Gadget, then select
> Enlightenment->Theme from the menu - the animation there is one I've
> used for splash and busy screens as well, but the FR doesn't seem to
> have sufficient horsepower to do that without noticeably slowing load
> times, so I axed them - eventually I may end up with a 'pretty' and a
> 'functional' version of the theme)
>
> Still to do: Several components (like keyboard suggestion popup,
> tasklist) are still black-text-on-grey-gradient, will be changing to
> light-on-black.  Some visual elements (like left-right arrows on top
> bar) are still IMHO pretty ugly with software_16, which I hope to fix.
>
> I'm hoping within a couple weeks or so to have finished at least the
> structural/composition changes, resulting in a leaner and faster theme
> that can easily have any/all images altered to result in a completely
> different yet still leaner/faster theme.
>
> I've also worked on theming Elementary, Zhone, and SHR's telephony
> GUIs, (just looked at Paroli so far) but haven't yet seen any way to do
> so without overwriting the original files - which of course is a no-no,
> being subject to reversion whenever the package owning them is
> updated.  (Can anyone tell me a 'right' way to override them?  Does it
> require rewritten apps that explicitly support theme selection or
> something?)
>
> For those unaware, a .edj file is essentially an archive containing one
> or more .edc (text) files that define the theme, any number of lossy or
> lossless compressed images, fonts, and a script to recreate the .edj
> file after extracting and altering it.  So it's possible to extract an
> edje file (with edje_decc) and simply replace the image files for, say,
> the GSM applet, then recompress the theme and run with it.
>
>
>
> In order to get a more responsive 'desktop' it's helpful to:
>
> Set Application, Top Shelf, Keyboard, and Status Animation Off (under
> Illume Settings: Display->Animation) - Play with the settings and see
> what suits you, I ended up with Top Shelf set to Very Fast and
> everything else off.  These animations don't take much processing
> power, but the wait while the opening/closing is animated can 'feel'
> slow, especially if heavy CPU usage causes it to pull back to only a
> couple frames between the two states.
>
> Set Software_16 rendering instead of Software (under Illume Settings:
> Advanced->Engine) - As noted many times before, display is faster
> and more responsive, but some graphics look blotchy or jagged with
> software_16. One of the goals of Serenity is circumventing this, such
> as trying to ensure that any imagery (e.g. Top Shelf background) either
> stretches only monochrome portions, or doesn't get stretched at all.
> Hopefully this will change at some point - Software_16 visual
> improvements, Software speed improvements, or maybe upcoming changes to
> xglamo support offering compositing.
>
> "killall -HUP enlightenment" - this or some other method (like
> move/restore a .desktop file from /usr/share/applications) that forces
> enlightenment/illume to refresh the desktop display once after booting
> has been documented to reduce E's CPU usage dramatically, such as from
> 25% to 3%...  Presumably the root cause of this will at some point be
> fixed upstream and this will no longer have any effect, nor be needed.
> Create a .desktop file with "Exec=killall -HUP enlightenment", mine is
> named 'relite' (as is the console script that does the same)
>
> j
>
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-- 
David Reyes Samblas Martinez
http://www.tuxbrain.com
Open ultraportable & embedded solutions
Openmoko, Openpandora, GP2X the Wiz, Letux 400, Arduino
Hey, watch out!!! There's a linux in your pocket!!!




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