Gtk3 theme reload hack (idea)

[jasperro]

I don't really know where to put this, but I found a solution/hack to enable Gtk3 on-the-fly theme reloading. It is very simple. This was tested on i3wm. I installed gnome-settings-daemon, and ran/usr/lib/gsd-xsettings. After that, I changed my wpgtk theme and ran gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme Adapta && gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme FlatColor, and it changed the gtk theme without restarting the application. I hope you can do something with this information.

[deviantfero]

could you provide a video? try reproducing with thunar, you could record your screen with simple-screen-recorder, I'd be very interested if this was consistently reproducible.

[jasperro]

Sure!

[jasperro]

And I seem to be able to get the same effect with xsettingsd, which is very lightweight, has less dependencies and allows only changing the gtk theme without messing up your fonts, icons and cursor.

[deviantfero]

Nice! I will look more into it and see if I can integrate it as an optional dependency, thanks for the tip.

I'll keep this open for when I implement it, in the meantime, you can have auto-reload if you use the:
Run command after colorize option in the Options tab, you can set it to run gsettings set ...

[jasperro]

For xsettingsd you need a config file with the following text: Net/ThemeName "FlatColor"
The run after colorize command needs to be timeout 0.5s xsettingsd -c configfilename

[jasperro]

I have been tinkering with this some more, and I now have a working python script that can very easily be implemented!

import shutil
import subprocess
import os
import tempfile

"""Runs xsettingsd for a short time to reload gtk3 theme"""
if shutil.which("xsettingsd"):
    fd, path = tempfile.mkstemp()
    try:
        with os.fdopen(fd, 'w+') as tmp:
            tmp.write('Net/ThemeName "FlatColor"\n')
            tmp.close()
            subprocess.Popen.wait(subprocess.Popen(["timeout", "0.2s", "xsettingsd", "-c", path]))
    finally:
            os.remove(path)

[deviantfero]

this is great!!, but are you sure we need the timeout? by the time I run this script the GTK theme has been fundamentally changed, could you test without it? I mean, even if it can't be done without a timeout, I think is good enough.

[jasperro]

A timeout is needed, and can be reduced to 0.01s. The reason I did this is because xsettingsd is a daemon that keeps running if you don't interrupt it, and the timeout keeps the daemon running for a short time only and kills it after the timeout. Xsettingsd ignores theme changes for some reason, so using it as a daemon wouldn't work.

[deviantfero]

great, I'll integrate this as soon as possible, thanks!

…

-- att. Fernando Vasquez --

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:38 AM jasperro ***@***.***> wrote: A timeout is needed, and can be reduced to 0.01s. The reason I did this is because xsettingsd is a daemon that keeps running if you don't interrupt it, and the timeout keeps the daemon running for a short time only and kills it after the timeout. The daemon ignores theme changes for some reason, so using it as a daemon wouldn't work. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#112 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKojSYxNt1uHq60X7fm3q7MGL9hanWVDks5ungKwgaJpZM4Xyi_G> .

[deviantfero]

Hey @jasperro, the new 5.8.0 release includes live reloading! check it out!

[jasperro]

Hey, I'm using the latest wpgtk-git on Arch, and have xsettingsd installed, but the reload doesn't seem to be working. But my script still seems to work. Do you have the same problem?

[deviantfero]

I'm sorry for the late answer, I'm only having this issue with firefox and wpg itself, but just when I do this from the GUI, when doing it from the cli wpg changes color on the fly, while firefox still doesn't

[jasperro]

Weird, seems that the live reloading only works in the cli. My firefox and wpg do reload when I use the cli. Do you have any idea why this is? Maybe the subprocess needs to be forced to run as a terminal app?

[deviantfero]

nope, no idea, any clues on how to achieve that?

[rahatzamancse]

Hey, Don't know if I should open a new issue or ask it here. I am making my own gtk customized theme with gtk.css and other files making them templates of wpg. I use lxappearance to set my theme which is located at default location: ~/.local/share/themes/ (also symlinked to ~/.themes/ if that is somehow related).
But whenever I apply a wallpaper and theme with wpg (gui or cli), the gtk apps reload and uses the theme of Flatcolor (if Flatcolor is not installed, else changes to Adwaita).
And if I manually restart the app, it shows the theme I made as expected.
Any idea what is happening?

[jasperro]

@rahatzamancse The code currently expects FlatColor when it reloads, this is hard-coded in. @deviantfero Maybe the current theme can be queried and set again with gsettings (will require setting theme with gsettings too I think) or maybe the current theme can be read from the gtk config or wpg config. @rahatzamancse what do you think is the best option for you? Is using gsettings commands to set the theme fine for you? That will be the easiest to implement as I don't think lxappearance sets the theme in gsettings (could be wrong)

[rahatzamancse]

@jasperro You're right. lxappearance does not use gsettings or edit dconf. Instead, it writes the theme name and other details in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini and ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (Though icon theme is written in both dconf and gtkrc by lxappearance). I am saying this from what I have experimented so far.

But that is not the issue here. The issue is that the code expects the user to use only one theme(Flatcolor). I am sorry if I sound a bit rude, but I do not like the approach of using xsettingsd without knowing if there is a settings daemon running or not (suppose the user is using gnome DE) and forcefully setting theme Flatcolor (which is very pointy and ugly to me, and most of the ricers will use their own gtk theme anyway).

So, I made a PR #202 fixing all these problems. Please check that out.

BTW, thanks a lot for making this awesome program. Really enjoying using it, and thinking to manage all my dots with this gem :)