How to create themes for MATE?

Question

I'm looking for information on the basic structure of a theme for MATE (in order to build my own).

I took an existing theme and renamed it, but I have been unable to get it to show up in Appearance Preferences. (It claimed to have imported but does not show in the theme chooser).

Is there some guide or documentation that covers the basic structure of a theme?

A. Can you edit it live in ~/.themes or do you have to repackage and import to test changes?

B. How does it get it's name?

C. What files are required for it to work?

D. How do you set a screen shot?

E. Many themes have gtk-2.0,gtk-3.0,metacity-1,xfwm4, etc subfolders. How do I know which one I'm using?

F. I'm not even sure what type of theme MATE uses. Is it metacity? GTK? It's own format?

Also, documentation on the structure of the file(s) would be good. It appears similar too, but not the same as, css.

It should go without saying, but I already tried Googleing for this, and found next to nothing in the way of a simple "My First MATE Theme" tutorial.

Solution

Unfortunately I don't have the answers to all of your questions. I did some testing on CentOS 7 with Mate 1.8.1, so here goes:

A. Yes, you can edit ~/.themes. I noticed that changes to (e.g.) buttons take effect when opening new windows. For instance, suppose you make changes by changing pictures in the gtk-2.0 and you open another filemanager window, that window would pick up your changes as opposed to windows that have already been openen.

B. I copied one of the existing themes. By editing the index.theme file in the root folder, I was able to edit the new theme name.

C. I'm not quite sure. I was able to manipulate the window contents by editing pictures in the various gtk-2.0/* folders. The metacity-1 folder seems to hold information with regards to the window borders.

D. Not sure what you mean here, do you mean how to add a thumbnail or preview for your theme?

E. As far as I can tell, gtk-2.0 and metacity-1 are used for sure. Not sure about the other folders though.

F. I'm not sure either, but I think that it might be 'Marco' which is a fork of Metacity.

I was as successful as you with regard to instructions about how to create a Mate theme. I did find some useful information on GTK widgets (especially regarding widget states) here: http://orford.org/gtk/

Comments

[TheBeginner]

Which theme are you modifying?