Version 16 of gtklook.tcl

Updated 2004-02-20 12:07:48

There have been some discussions about how to improve the look and feel of Tk on Unix, and a site was set up to host development - http://tcl.projectforum.com/tk/Home - where, JAC (I believe) posted some nice looking defaults for Tk on Unix.

I took those and tweaked them some, and here is the result:

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 if { [tk windowingsystem] == "x11" } {
    option add *borderWidth 1 widgetDefault
    option add *activeBorderWidth 1 widgetDefault
    option add *selectBorderWidth 1 widgetDefault
    option add *font -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*

    option add *padX 2
    option add *padY 4

    option add *Listbox.background white
    option add *Listbox.selectBorderWidth 0
    option add *Listbox.selectForeground white
    option add *Listbox.selectBackground #4a6984

    option add *Entry.background white
    option add *Entry.foreground black
    option add *Entry.selectBorderWidth 0
    option add *Entry.selectForeground white
    option add *Entry.selectBackground #4a6984

    option add *Text.background white
    option add *Text.selectBorderWidth 0
    option add *Text.selectForeground white
    option add *Text.selectBackground #4a6984

    option add *Menu.activeBackground #4a6984
    option add *Menu.activeForeground white
    option add *Menu.activeBorderWidth 0
    option add *Menu.highlightThickness 0
    option add *Menu.borderWidth 2

    option add *MenuButton.activeBackground #4a6984
    option add *MenuButton.activeForeground white
    option add *MenuButton.activeBorderWidth 0
    option add *MenuButton.highlightThickness 0
    option add *MenuButton.borderWidth 0

    option add *highlightThickness 0
    option add *troughColor #bdb6ad
 }

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JE Gnome 2.4 adds something like this to the X resource database automatically based on the selected theme. (Unfortunately the resources aren't quite right, and in typical Gnome fashion there's no way to turn this feature off.)

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nl Can someone post "before" and "after" screenshots please?

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Before:

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After:

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Any particular changes from here you'd like to feed back into the code at the Tk Revitalization site?

davidw I think they all read this site, and trust that they'll make use of anything good I managed to cobble together.

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CL copies in comments from DKF, out of context: "Other things that I've seen done have been reducing scrollbar widths, but that only works for some windows and not others. . . . (Making editable/manipulable areas white is also a good technique, but requires more thought; not every canvas or text widget might be manipulable for example.)"

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CF I found that I liked different fonts on different platforms. This works for me:

 if {$tcl_platform(platform) eq "unix"} {
   set fontSize 12
 }

 if {$tcl_platform(platform) eq "windows"} {
   set fontSize 8
 }

 option add *Label.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Labelframe.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Button.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Menu.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Menubutton.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Radiobutton.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Checkbutton.font [list arial $fontSize normal]
 option add *Listbox.font [list arial $fontSize normal]

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AM I used these options on Solaris running CDE, I noticed the following things are missing:

 option add *background gray    ;# What is the right colour?
 option add *Entry.foreground black    ;# Defaults to white on my system! 

 . configure -background gray   ;# See general background

The strange thing is: "." is not configured via "*background" - under Windows it also gets a separate colour.

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davidw Let's see... I guess having entry foregrounds be black would work. Added. In a Gtk2 app, sampling the background color gets me #dcdad5 if you want to add that in and see how it looks.

PT 20-Feb-2004: Looks to me like the MenuButton entries should be Menubutton. Also the set above make frames look raised. I'd suggest adding

  *Labelframe.borderWidth 2
  *Frame.borderWidth 2

so that -relief groove still looks the way we expect.

I'm a bit dubious about the padX and padY too. I don't think that they help.

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Category GUI