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XP theme for jwm (1.0.5 only)

Posted: Wed 05 Oct 2005, 10:52
by bombayrockers
the original theme that came with jwm in puppy 1.0.5 is quite shabby. so i modified it to look much more like xp.

download the jwm-puppy-xp.pup. install it. it will overwrite the previous files for the jwm xp theme. click on ok when it ask to overwrite files.

use the jwm theme switcher to select jwm-puppy-xp theme

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 00:11
by BarryK
Thanks very much for that.

I think the 1.0.6 live-cd will have at least 3 themes built-in,
the controversial peach theme, the original grey, and the xp theme
that you have sent in.

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 03:27
by gliezl
Bombayrockers, how did you make a "drop shadow effect" on your desktop fonts? They are wonderful! :D

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 03:55
by rarsa
Gliezl wrote:how did you make a "drop shadow effect" on your desktop fonts?
1. Right click on anyicon on the desktop
2. Select "ROX-Filer | Options ..."
3. Select "Pinboard" tab.
4. Select "Outlined text" radio button"
5. Select the colors you want for the text and shadow
6. Click Save

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 08:49
by pakt
bombayroclers, thanks for the jwm-puppy-xp.pup.

I like the background, but I found it somewhat dark and unfocused so I took the liberty of sharpening it a little and adjusting the image's gamma value to lighten it up a bit. I'm attaching the modified image as litrix4.jpg. Use whichever image you like best ;)

BTW, is the original high resolution image available?

EDIT: Image deleted as I managed to make an improved but lean (only 50KB at 1024x768 ;) ) image from Barry's original. The image (litrix_1024x768.jpg) is further down in the thread.

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 09:53
by aximum
Is it possible to change the Window Style in JWM?

Thanks

Posted: Thu 06 Oct 2005, 23:58
by BarryK
The original litrix.jpg was about 160K, I knocked it down to under 40K,
so it is a bit blurred.

Original attached.

Posted: Fri 07 Oct 2005, 07:48
by pakt
BarryK wrote:The original litrix.jpg was about 160K, I knocked it down to under 40K,
so it is a bit blurred.

Original attached.
Thanks, Barry!

It will be interesting to see if I can reduce and optimize the original to around 40-50K while keeping the quality high ;)

EDIT: I have now modified the original - I think this image is a good compromise between size & quality.

To use as wallpaper, right-click on image and choose 'Save Image As...' to download it. Then copy image to /root/.jwm/themes/. Open Start -> Control Panel -> Desktop background image and you can choose the new image from the list.

Enjoy :D

Posted: Fri 07 Oct 2005, 23:53
by BarryK
pakt,
that looks good!

...is it possible to get rid of the "building blocks" in the sky?

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 01:53
by Lobster
:)

This is one of the results of over compression. It is possible that some people do not get this blockiness (it seems different on some monitors, screens resolutions, graphic chips or some such variable) The way to overcome might be to make the sky one shade but allow the clouds. I remember reporting blockiness in images to someone providing a daily pic
- they said there was no blockiness. On a different computer (forget what made the difference) the blockiness was not apparant.

On my screen it is very blocky :?

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 01:59
by Alucard_the_dex
LCD screen VERY blocky

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 02:15
by Lobster
That I think may be the difference - I am using TFT screen but if I used a CRT the image might blend more . . .

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 02:18
by Alucard_the_dex
I dont even know how to set my Video settigs in here isnt it in the setup wizard>? i mean i wanna configure like the refresh rate and things not just the resolution

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 07:59
by pakt
BarryK wrote:pakt,
that looks good!

...is it possible to get rid of the "building blocks" in the sky?
I wanted to get the file size down to under 50KB so this is the result. I think the problem lies in the large number of subtle color changes in the sky which produce blocking when compressed too hard.

I'll be happy to give it another shot, but it will probably mean a somewhat larger file. What limit do you want to put on the file size?

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 08:45
by BarryK
I don't suppose there's any actual rule that they should be a certain max
size. Under 50K is good to aim for.

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 12:44
by Alienx
I propose a third variant to XP theme :wink:

Posted: Sat 08 Oct 2005, 14:14
by BarryK
Looks nice.
I'm downloading it now, will line em all up, see what gets into 1.0.6!

Posted: Sun 09 Oct 2005, 13:38
by pakt
BarryK wrote:pakt,
that looks good!

...is it possible to get rid of the "building blocks" in the sky?
After twisting and turning the original litrix image any number of times, I managed to get this result. It is within the 50KB limit I set (in fact it is exactly 50KB ;) ) and has the least number of compression artifacts I could get within that file size.

If a better quality image is desired (less than or equal to 50KB in size), we should try to find a similar image but with fewer nuances of color. The sky in this image shifts from dark blue to light blue making compression distortion especially noticeable.

Is the result good enough or should we look for another image?

Posted: Mon 10 Oct 2005, 11:59
by Alienx
WONDERFUL work, pakt ! :D

can you teach us how to do it ?

some guidelines ?


please !!!!! :wink:

Posted: Tue 11 Oct 2005, 14:39
by pakt
Alienx wrote:WONDERFUL work, pakt ! :D

can you teach us how to do it ?

some guidelines ?

please !!!!! :wink:
Thanks for the praise, Alienx ;). I'm just sorry I couldn't make the image a little sharper, but that would have made the file size a lot bigger.

I am definitly not an expert on image manipulation, and this is the first time I used the Gimp, so it took some experimentation to figure out how to do things. It turned out that I got the best result by simple means. This is what I ended up doing.

After saving Barry's original litrix image to harddisk and starting The Gimp with the saved image:

- From menu: 'Image' -> 'Scale Image...' and under 'Quality', set 'Interpolation' to 'Cubic (Best)'. Then changed the image from 1024x768 to 800x600 and clicked 'Scale'.

- From menu: 'Tools' -> 'Color Tools' -> 'Levels' changed Gamma from 1.00 to 1.10 then clicked 'OK'. (I have found that increasing Gamma instead of increasing brightness and/or lowering contrast to lighten an image often gives better results.)

- From menu: 'File' -> 'Save as...' -> 'litrix_lean.jpg'. Clicked 'Save' and the 'Save as JPEG' window popped up (here I could set the JPEG image 'quality', ie, how much of the image detail to keep - lower 'Quality' = less detail = more distortion).

- Clicked 'Show Preview in image window' then 'Advanced Options'. Here I could see what the 'File size' would be when changing 'Quality' (default=85) while at the same time seeing the effect of the Quality setting on the image. I found that by setting Quality to 68, I could get the File size down to 50.0 kB without too much distortion. Clicked on 'OK' - that's it :D