Themes are in a simple XML-subset format. There are multiple versions
of the theme format, and a given theme can support more than one format.
Version 1: THEMEDIR/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml
(original metacity format)
Version 2: THEMEDIR/metacity-1/metacity-theme-2.xml
Version 3: THEMEDIR/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
The subdirectory name is "metacity-1" in all versions.
As you might expect, older versions of metacity will not understand
newer theme formats. However, newer versions will use old themes.
Metacity will always use the newest theme format it understands that
the X server supports. Some format versions are only supported if you
have the right X server features.
Each format *requires* the corresponding filename. If you put version
2 format features in the metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml file, then
metacity will get angry.
This document has separate sections for each format version. You may
want to read the document in reverse order, since the base features
are discussed under version 1.
New Features in Theme Format Version 3.1
========================================
Additional predefined variables are added for positioning expressions:
frame_x_center: the X center of the entire frame, with respect to the
piece currently being drawn.
frame_y_center: the Y center of the entire frame, with respect to the
piece currently being drawn.
The
element now supports an "ellipsize_width" attribute. When
specified, this gives a width at which to ellipsize the title. If not
specified, the title will simply be clipped to the title area.
New Features in Theme Format Version 3
======================================
Format version 3 has exactly one new feature; any element in the file
can now have a version attribute:
version="[<|<=|=>|>] MAJOR.MINOR"
(< and > should be to be entity escaped as < and >). If this
version check is not met, then the element and its children will be
ignored. This allows having alternate sections of the theme file for
older and newer version of the Metacity theme format.
When placed on the toplevel element, an unsatisfied
version check will not just cause the contents of the file to be
ignored, it will also cause the lookup of a theme file to proceed on
and look for an older format 2 or format 1 file. This allows making a
metacity-theme-3.xml file that is only used the format version 3.2 or
newer is supported, and using metacity-theme-1.xml for older window
managers.
New Features in Theme Format Version 2
======================================
The optional attributes rounded_top_left, rounded_top_right,
rounded_bottom_left and rounded_bottom_right on
should now be the radius of the corner in pixels. You may still use
the values "false" for 0 and "true" for 5, which means v1 values will
still work just fine.
has a new optional attribute, hide_buttons. If this
is true, no buttons will be displayed on the titlebar.
Anywhere you can use a positive integer, you can use an integer constant.
As well as constant integers and reals, you may define constant colours,
thus:
has two new optional attributes, background and alpha.
If you specify alpha, you must specify background. background is a
colour used for the background of the frame. alpha is the transparency
as a real between 0.0 and 1.0. If the current X server does not support
alpha channels, the value is ignored.
The filename attribute of may begin with "theme:". If so, the
rest of the string is the name of a theme icon. The 64x64 version of the
icon is used, except for fallback mini_icons, which use the 16x16 version.
This does not affect ordinary resizing. For example:
s are parsed but ignored.
Fallback icons can be specified using . There are two
optional arguments, icon and mini_icon. The values of these arguments
are identical to that of the filename attribute of . Fallback
icons are used when a window does not supply its own icon. If a fallback
icon is not specified with , Metacity will use a built-in
icon, as in metacity-theme-1.
The element, as well as the original start_angle and end_angle
attributes, may be given from and to attributes. The values of these
attributes are given in degrees clockwise, with 0 being straight up.
For example:
may now take an optional resize attribute, with
the same interpretation as the resize attribute on .
If this attribute is omitted for state="shaded", it defaults to "both".
(If it is omitted for state="normal", it remains an error.)
In addition to the four