Plata-theme

A Gtk theme based on Material Design Refresh.

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Typography

Plata strongly depends on Material Design resources, especially its fonts.

1. Roboto

• Very famous as the default truetype font in Android (English ver.).
• Multilingual support is not good.
• Weight used in Plata: 300, 400, 500, 700

	Primary	Fallback
Gnome-Shell	Roboto	Sans-serif
Cinnamon	Roboto	Sans-serif

Plata is designed with nominal 13px (or 14px) Roboto Regular font. In Gnome, "window-scaling-factor = 1.0" means -gtk-dpi = 96, it also means:

13 [px] x 72 [pt/inch] / 96 [px/inch] = 9.75 [pt]
14 [px] x 72 [pt/inch] / 96 [px/inch] = 10.5 [pt]

That's the reason why 13.33px = 10pt is used for rem/px conversion in Gtk 3.2x/4.0 theming.

Note:

NotoSans CJK (ChineseJapaneseKorean) opentype fonts are actually 0.1em taller than Roboto fonts, so if 10pt Roboto was suitable on your LCDs, set 9pt for NotoSans CJK families.

Verify the fonts are rendered correctly via font-viewer tools like Gnome-Font-Viewer.

Required Components

Plata supports Gtk 2.24.x, 3.20.x, 3.22.x and 3.24.x.

* Gtk-3.0             >= 3.20.0
* Gtk-2.0             >= 2.24.30
* gtk2-engines-pixbuf  >= 2.24.30
* gtk2-engines-murrine >= 0.98.1

Supported Desktop Environments

* GNOME-Shell     >= 3.20.0
* GNOME-Flashback >= 3.20
* Budgie-Desktop  >= 10.4
* Cinnamon        >= 3.2.0
* XFce4           >= 4.12.2
* Mate            >= 1.22 (Marco >= 1.22.2)
* LXDE            >= 0.99.1 (Gtk 2.x only)

Unsupported Gtk Based Desktop(s)

• Pantheon
• Unity7
• Gnome-Shell customed by downstream (Ubuntu session, Pop! OS ...etc)
• Mate

Note:

• Plata does NOT support elementaryOS.

Installation from Package(s)

• Arch (AUR): plata-theme
• OpenSUSE: Official repository
• Solus: Official repository
• Void: Official repository
• Flatpak: Official flathub repository (current package branch = 3.22)
• My Personal Package Archives (PPA): plata-theme

Installation from Git Source

1. If previous versions were installed/existed, remove them first.

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/themes/{Plata,Plata-Compact,Plata-Lumine,Plata-Lumine-Compact,Plata-Noir,Plata-Noir-Compact}
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/themes/{Plata,Plata-Compact,Plata-Lumine,Plata-Lumine-Compact,Plata-Noir,Plata-Noir-Compact}
rm -rf ~/.local/share/themes/{Plata,Plata-Compact,Plata-Lumine,Plata-Lumine-Compact,Plata-Noir,Plata-Noir-Compact}
rm -rf ~/.themes/{Plata,Plata-Compact,Plata-Lumine,Plata-Lumine-Compact,Plata-Noir,Plata-Noir-Compact}

2. Check build-requirements: Currently Plata bundles neither pre-generated stylesheets nor PNG images. So users and/or contributors should generate proper CSSs, PNGs and gresources at build-time.

* autoconf
* automake
* inkscape                                  >= 0.91
* libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev (gdk-pixbuf2-devel)  >= 2.32.2
* libglib2.0-dev (glib2-devel)              >= 2.48.0
* libxml2-utils (libxml2)
* pkg-config (pkgconfig)
* sassc                                     >= 3.3

* libmarco-dev (marco-devel)                >= 1.22.2 (if --enable-mate)

* parallel                                  (if --enable-parallel)
* zip                                       (if --enable-telegram)

Note:

• In OpenSUSE, add an extra dependency:

  gdk-pixbuf-devel        >= 2.32.2
  

• Plata employs SassC wrapper of libsass to generate CSS stylesheets.

• Plata uses inkscape to generate installable PNG files.

• Plata uses glib-compile-resources to compile the gresource files for Gtk and Gnome-Shell.

• glib-2.0 >= 2.53, Gnome-Shell 3.26 theming is used if --enable-gnome.

3. Build and install system-wide:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

Note:

• Default prefix is /usr/local.
• All 6 variants are installed by default.
• make generates proper CSSs and PNGs to be installed. It will take about 5min to 15min to build. For example, Ubuntu's build-server takes 10min.
• sudo make install installs multiple versioned theme and Gtk automatically selects the properly versioned one when running.

4. To speed up by using concurrency-build, pass this specific option to autogen.sh:

--enable-parallel       enable parallel-build support (type: bool)

Note:

• This feature requires GNU parallel, so please add parallel to build-requirements. Parallel can execute multiple scripts and binaries to be suitable for multi-threading. It could especially shorten the rendering-time via inkscape.
• -jN option to be passed to GNU make is surely usable, but Plata currently employs parallel.
• This feature should not be applied when packaging on remote/shared build-servers.

5. To disable some DE supports, pass these specific options to autogen.sh:

--disable-gnome         disable gnome-shell support (type: bool)
--disable-cinnamon      disable cinnamon support (type: bool)
--disable-flashback     disable flashback support (type: bool)
--disable-xfce          disable xfce support (type: bool)
--disable-mate          disable mate support (type: bool)
--disable-openbox       disable openbox support (type: bool)

Note:

• The installer installs Budgie-Desktop support even if all of options above were applied.
• Cinnamon/Mate support hooks metacity-1 directory even if GNOME-Flashback support was disabled.

6. To enable extra Gtk release support, pass these options:

--enable-gtk_next      enable Gtk 4.0 support (type: bool)

7. To change the default 4 Key-Colors, pass these options:

--with-selection_color        Primary color for 'selected-items' (Default: #3f51b5 = Indigo500, type: string)
--with-accent_color           Secondary color for notifications and OSDs (Default: #7986cb = Indigo300, type: string)
--with-suggestion_color       Secondary color for 'suggested' buttons (Default: #673ab7 = DPurple500, type: string)
--with-destruction_color      Tertiary color for 'destructive' buttons (Default: #f44336 = Red500, type: string)

Note:

• Color-codes are defined as # + 6-digit HEXs (Standard RGB definitions in HTML codes).

• The Material Design Color Palette can be found here.

• Example: If you would like to use 'Teal500' as selection_color, use this:

  bash:

  ./autogen.sh --with-selection_color=#009688

  zsh with extended_glob:

  ./autogen.sh --with-selection_color='#009688'

  This switchese the theme to Teal selection colors.

• Basically selection_color and suggestion_color should use 500 colors, and accent_color should use 300 colors.

• While doing make, Plata changes those 4 colors in all stylesheets and images, and make clean cleans up all generated files from source directories.

GtkSourceView/Gedit Color Scheme Support

2 theme files plata-light.xml and plata-dark.xml are installed by default into Plata*/gtksourceview directories.

Note:

• The color-scheme can be used in Gnome-Builder, Gnome-Sushi, Meld and Gedit if installed to ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-3.0/styles or ~/.local/share/gtksourceview-4/styles directory.

Extra Browser Support

To try our color samples for FirefoxColor test pilot, check these URLs:

1. Plata

2. Plata-Lumine

3. Plata-Noir

Note:

• We no longer support "Normal" UI layout in Chrome(ium). Use "Refresh" instead.

• Vivaldi can make custom themes via settings like these:

  Background: #F8F8F8 (#1D1D1D)
  Foreground: #111111 (#F5F5F5)
  Highlight:  #3F51B5
  Accent:     #E7E7E7 (#080808)
  Accent Color from Active Page: [ ]
  Apply Accent Color to Window:  [*]
  Transparent Tabs:              [*]
  Corner Rounding:               2px
  

Extra Dock Support

To try "Plank" theming, pass this option:

--enable-plank         enable Plank support (type: bool)

Then select Gtk via plank --preferences.

Note:

• Both Plata and Plata-Noir shares the dark theming, Plata-Lumine uses light theming.
• Don't expect too much. Plank is NOT a themeable widget for me!

Extra Compositor Support

Compton is the famous stand-alone compositor that works well with the Openbox window-manager. The installer installs recommended configuration file compton.conf into Plata/openbox-3 directory if Openbox support is enabled.

Next, copy that file into ~/.config/ and restart compton to read the settings. That compositor still has some limitations in its features for Plata, however.

Extra Telegram Support

To try "Telegram 1.0" theming, pass this option:

--enable-telegram      enable Telegram 1.0 support (type: bool)

The installer installs compressed tdesktop-theme files into Plata*/telegram directories if Telegram support is enabled. Then open the file via Telegram > Main Menu > Settings > Chat background > Choose from file.

Note:

• The plata.tdesktop-theme and plata-lumine.tdesktop-theme are for light-variant, and plata-noir.tdesktop-theme is for dark-variant.
• Bundled noise-texture images are for tiled mode.
• Telegram support is a W.I.P currently.

Extra Tweetdeck Support

To try "Colordeck for Tweetdeck" extension theming, pass this option:

--enable-tweetdeck      enable Tweetdeck-colordeck support (type: bool)

The installer installs cdk files into Plata*/tweetdeck directories if Tweetdeck support is enabled. Then open the file via Colordeck -> import > "Colors" -> Choose File.

Note:

• Chrome Web Store
• Firefox Add-ons
• Mixed and dark variants are supported.
• Currently those files support "Colors" only, so enabling "Colors" checkbox is enough.

Extra Air-for-Steam Support

To try "Air for Steam" colors and themes, pass this option (dark-variant only):

--enable-airforsteam      enable Air-for-Steam support (type: bool)

You should veify that you've already installed Air-for-Steam skin to ~/.steam/skins directory. The installer installs 2 files into Plata-Noir/airforsteam directory if Air-for-Steam support is enabled:

• Copy Resource/colors/plata-noir.styles to ~/.steam/skins/Air-for-Steam-*/Resource/colors or ~/.steam/skins/Air-for-Steam-*/Resource/colors/user.
• Copy Resource/themes/_plata-noir.styles to ~/.steam/skins/Air-for-Steam-*/Resource/themes.

Edit ~/.steam/skins/Air-for-Steam-*/config.init to activate those styles, then restart the Steam app.

Work in Progress

TODO

Public License

• GPLv2.0 (Codebase)

• CC BY-SA 4.0 (Asset images)

Note:

And an icon-theme in Cinnamon thumbnails: Paper Icons by Sam Hewitt is licensed under CC-SA-4.0.

Donations

Special Thanks to

Nana-4, the developer of Materia (formerly Flat-Plat)

Sam Hewitt, the developer of Paper-icon theme