GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 492721
color schemes not robust against upgrades
Last modified: 2007-11-02 18:31:06 UTC
Release 2.12 introduced two new components of the color scheme in Clearlooks: tooltip_bg_color and tooltip_fg_color. However, if the user had customized his theme with a previous version, these two colors won't appear in his "gtk_color_scheme" (whether it is brought by .gtkrc-2.0 or by gnome-settings-daemon), because this variable is overriden as a whole. So, there must be something like a default_color_scheme that specifies the default colors in the theme that can't be overriden by the user. Or alternatively, the colors could be all defined in separate variables. All in all, I fear this mandates some changes in GTK+ because I haven't found a way to do it properly. See for example http://bugs.debian.org/444001 for the resulting behavior with a theme customised using gnome 2.18 and running gnome 2.20.
There should not be any problems. GTK+ merges the color scheme from the different sources (gtkrc, xsetting, application setting). That means that as long the themes gtkrc defines the colors in the "gtk-color-scheme" everything should work fine. So the variable is _not_ overriden as a whole. The only way I can think of this happening right now is that if the theme does not specify default values for all colors it needs in the gtkrc.
Hmmm indeed, my initial analysis was wrong, as missing colors in the GConf settings propagated by g-s-d don't trigger any problem. Do you know what could have caused the issue the user noticed then? I don't see anything relevant in the g-s-d or gtk+ changelogs. It's too bad he hasn't kept the GConf settings that triggered the issue.
I think that the only thing that can cause this issue is if the theme is broken and does not define default values for all the colors it needs. However I don't remember having an issue like that in any release of gtk-engines. (There was a type once, but that did not affect the validity of the theme, just the appearance dialog. And it was fixed in 2.12.0.)
AFAICT this happened with a stock 2.12.0 that was freshly upgraded. Anyway, this is the only report I have received, so I guess the only thing left is to close it due to lack of information.
Yup, closing as incomplete. If anyone is able to reproduce this problem, please reopen.