KDE: Major surgery

Last time I wanted to transplant a ".UI"-file-based configuration dialog to Serenity style. I did it... and so much more!

First, now Serenity is a single archive. That's the major surgery I did. I don't know any program that can handle makefiles and that kind of things so I just took the archive of another theme with a style and a window decoration: Polyester. By the way, thanks to Marco for all the hard work he did so I could just slip my feet in his shoes. That's pretty much what I did. I removed Polyester's sources and put Serenity's ones instead. The rest is pure white magic. I invoked the goddess Kate and all her minions --Control+F, Control+R, Control+C and Control+V. After some MP3 chantings, Kate granted my wish: "Serenity will now and forever be one archive". :-D

Since Polyester has ".ui" files for both the style and the window decoration configuration dialogs, Serenity acquired this feature along the magical process. Now, when you say to your Konsole "Configure, make and install!", you get the total Serenity at once. Of course, you can still install only what you want but does "a half serenity" actually mean something?

Now that I can use Qt designer instead of having to code everything by hand, I don't hesitate to turn the options upside down. And I needed it! I re-arranged the configuration dialog in three columns so that it didn't become bigger than its calling parent when I added more options.

I already described a few of these options in my previous posts. Here are a few new ones that are very noticeable: The button-alike framing of the sub-menus arrows can now be deactivated. Since I felt the tiny arrows weren't visible enough when I remove the framing, I then used bigger arrows so that the sub-menu indicators have always approximatively the same size. I blended the big arrows just a little with the menu background and the result is really nice. The second thing I did for the menus is to add a new groove style: a very subtle gradient with round corners. But I'm not sure I'll keep it. The result isn't... hmmm... optimal when the menubar is cut into several lines.

By the way, while I'm speaking about gradients: I changed Serenity's own gradient routines to use only int's instead of float's. That was meant to accelerate them. I don't know if it did any real good but I feel a kind of acceleration. The power of auto-suggestion, maybe? ;-)

Something that should be also immediately visible: the tabs. I removed the button-alike looks of the active tab. I haven't use them since I introduced the nicer gradient look and I couldn't stand them when I tried them recently. Then I could take care of the inactive tabs. Somebody wrote that he couldn't get used to the "big grey bar" look. Maybe that was true that the inactive tabs were, well, too solid. I changed them to use a vertical gradient instead. It's nice. It's "lighter". To complete the look, I gave the possibility to separate the inactive tabs so that they don't look like a bar. A picture is worth a thousand words, so look for yourself. This is the new style configuration dialog. Look very closely and you will see the new smooth junction of the active tab with the panel below it. (And yes, the very light touch of grey below the yellowish bar is the menu groove.) That's pretty much all I did for the style.

For once, I worked a little more on the window decoration. That's very visible in the new configuration dialog. (Don't look for the "intentionally left blank" spaces, I managed to get rid of them. They made me laugh.) I however didn't succeed in giving much more room to the preview. (I tried very hard but the dialog apparently refuses to shrink beyond a certain point.) Any way, I haven't finished yet.

Look at the second page. Do you see the option "Colorized symbols"? That's the first step. I've already removed one type of buttons from the dedicated combobox but thanks to this option, the number of button types got multiplied by two. I will removed some more button types but I will also add a new switch: "Colorized buttons" that will multiply the remaining number of types by two, once more. With the last option I keep in my sleeve, it will be possible to change of button type every day and not to see twice the same in a month... or two months if you count the solid titlebar background switch that also has some effect on the buttons. Totally useless, especially that some combinations of options will clean the titlebar up to the point of having nothing left but the caption, but totally indispensable too. ;-)

Well, time to go to bed. It's already tomorrow... as always!