Chameleon plugin : Native/GTK/QT look for aMSN

[kakaroto]

UPDATE : Chameleon is not maintained anymore, so don't even bother asking anything about it. It does not work with tile 0.8.x and does not work with tcl/tk 8.5.x so don't bother trying that.

Hello all!!
I hope the title will get your attention, and no, it's not a scam, it's for real!!!
Ever dreamed of seeing aMSN with a native toolkit, fitting perfectly in your desktop ? Now it's possible with the Chameleon plugin. Chameleon helps you change the skin of the application, but choosing a tile's theme (not to confuse with amsn's skins), the whole application will take the look you want by simply choosing the theme that fits you best. You can see screenshots here :
http://amsn.sourceforge.net/kakaroto/Chameleon/Screenshots

And You can download the plugin at :
http://amsn.sourceforge.net/kakaroto/Chameleon

There is a binary package for linux, windows and mac, they should work right away (mac package modified by Tom Hennigan, refer to : http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=7046).

Only condition : you need to grab the latest CVS version available at : http://amsn.sourceforge.net/amsn_cvs.tar.gz
The minimal CVS date version is March 14th.
Once you get it, you load the plugin, open a new window (preferences, login as.. screen, properties page of user), and choose the theme you want by Configuring the plugin.

For linux, there are 11 themes in the package, for Mac, 12 themes (11 base themes + native Aqua) and for windows XP, 13 themes (11 base themes + windows native, windows XP native).
New themes are being written, hopefully, a Clearlooks theme will soon be added.

Please post as many comments (nice and bad) as possible, the plugin was tested and is stable, but if any bugs were missed, your feedback would be appreciated.

I hope everyone likes it, have fun!
KaKaRoTo

[JackT]

Works great.. but when I tried to reload the session (closing and opening), I get an error dump.

Error picture

Running Windows XP SP 2, latest CVS, using the package provided, Tcl/tk 8.4.12.0.

[kakaroto]

Hi,
Thanks for the comment, it's weird it didn't work after a restart only, my guess is that a file from the plugin was modified... because it wouldn't have worked from the beggining.. maybe you opened common.tcl to take a look and when you saved it, it modifed it...
anyways, open Chameleon/common.tcl with a text editor (wordpad should be fine), go  to line 37, you'll find this :

Code:

proc ::${w_name} { command args } \
   "eval ::chameleon::${widget_type}::${widget_type}_launchCommand ${w_name} \$command \$args"

Make sure there is no character (no space, no nothing) after the backslash on the first line, it should be the backslash then the newline.
If there is no character, and the bug still happens, try removing the backslash and join the two lines together :

Code:

proc ::${w_name} { command args }  "eval ::chameleon::${widget_type}::${widget_type}_launchCommand ${w_name} \$command \$args"

hope it helps.

KaKaRoTo

[JackT]

Still same problem, let me load it up on another machine.

EDIT: Don't know what's wrong with machine #1, but the other computer runs it fine.

[kakaroto]

Humm... even when merging the two lines ?
Also, make sure you only have one copy of chameleon, not two (from amsn-extras), we never know..

[JackT]

I had another one in my amsn\plugins directory (from the plugins directory CVS), but I deleted that one.

[kakaroto]

ok..
you tried deleting the plugin and unzipping it again ?

[JackT]

Yes, I unzipped the one provided in the link to that directory and loaded it up.

[yeah]

Great!

Now everything is nicer and more readable (I've tried the xp theme)

But now the preferences are missing the groupboxes (if that's the proper name), I mean the black borders around groups of widgets.

[woekele]

Uhm, its normal that it doesnt change the contactlist window? Only the preferences?

[Tibeu]

Hey! Chameleon plugin + aMSN compiled with TCL/TK 8.5 = wooowww!!

[kakaroto]

@JackT : you didn't say if you deleted it and RETRIED unzipping.. and didn't say if merging the two lines together as I told you to before,made any difference (it's 100% sure should remove that bug)...

@yeah : I don't understand what you mean by group boxes, do you mean the labelframes ? I think that you're using the "winxpblue" theme, that one has a little error in its configuration (or was it done on purpose? don't know), you can get it back by adding the following line somewhere in the winxpblue.tcl file (in chameleon/themes/winxpblue) :

Code:

style default TLabelframe -borderwidth 2 -relief groove

If you're talking about the XP Native theme, then I don't understand, please send a screenshot!

@woekele : Yeah, it's normal it doesn't, because the whole contactlist is a text widget, and there is no text widget implemented in tile (no need to).. what would you expect to be changed in the contact list ? the buddy icon becoming rounded ? the nickname of your friends having a black/blue/whatever color as a background ? changing the contactlist look and feel would enter into amsn's skinning system, not tile's themeing engine. Also, it's not only the prefs window, it's everything else, login window, properties page, add contact, contact added you, close all tabs, are you sure you want to block the user, history window, add custom state, change nick, change display picture, etc... want more?
We're planning to create skins specific for use with tile, so both could integrate smoothly (a darker background color of the contactlist for the step theme for example), but it's not done, don't forget it's early code...

@Tibeu : lol! yeah, I'd like to see that! I like keramik a lot now! Used to like Clam, but keramik is awesome (if you don't mind a dark theme).
I think that if you can choose a good skin in amsn, a good theme with chameleon, desktop integration plugin, and tcl/tk 8.5 with aliased fonts... then aMSN will look sooo nice!!! then noone ever has to complain about aMSN not looking good!

[JackT]

Looks like its working now after replacing it.

[Fenix-TX]

Hey, i see that there is a tile-qt on themes, but i don't see it in chamaleon. I download myself but i can't compile it.

Message:"configure: error: cannot find install-sh or install.sh in tclconfig ./tclconfig"

[vivia]

@Fenix-TX: I tried compiling it too. However, I don't have time to try again now! Try getting the sources for tile-0.7.5 , placing the files from tile-qt inside replacing the original ./configure etc, and compiling. If it doesn't work, try again with switch -D NO_PRIVATE_HEADERS .

@kakaroto (and everyone else interested): I am also using Keramik on KDE, just that it doesn't have dark backgrounds (so the buttons don't look like they're glow-in-the-dark, lol). Shall I modify Keramik and make a clone of it that will REALLY integrate with the original KDE Keramik theme?