Howdy all,

First post but I'm here for a reason

I'm running openSuSE at work, and Ubuntu at home .. and have decided that whilst there are some wonderful themes (icons, wm, etc), I've decided that I want to make my own -- and from scratch where I'm able. So, I spent a week googling around and seriously, there are SO many customisation guides that all say the same thing .. go to this site, this other site, etc. That's nice and all, but I'm looking for (and can't easily find) the specifics of creating your own rather than using someone else's.

I'll lay down some examples, and with luck, I can build on some answers from my questions to get my work underway.

Oh, quick important defining point ... I'm using and staying with Gnome.

1. I want to make my own mouse cursors. What apps exist that can help me with this?
2. Icon standards. What sizes do I need, formats (PNG vs SVG), a listing of what "standards" I need to address (what are all the required mime types, etc) so my iconpack/s can address as much as possible.
3. I've started playing with GLADE, but is there any advice/howtos on creating the widgets themselves? How about gecko widgets/theme that will match my created GTK widgets? Any good apps to help make these?
4. WM themes .. I'm using compiz-fusion and loving it (beefy machine helps, but even my POS work machine runs it fairly well, although tweaked) .. but I'm going to want to make a compiz theme that matches (or close enough) a GTK theme for those times you need to turn it off (or when it decides to crash, which I've seen a couple of times when I push it just a bit too far). Any good howtos there? I'm also very focused on the WM as a whole, not just the window .. I want to make the panels as good as I can as well.

I'm more than happy to read, to discuss, and I'm quite eager to get underway. I have some specific ideas, and want to make something business friendly (ie functional) but still slick (no, my work will not be an OSX ripoff heh).

And needless to say, all work I make will be released and made available to all.

Any advice from people in the know, or perhaps other developers on what/how to do this with a minimum of fuss and bother. I'll be getting enough fuss and bother in the design stage

So, how's that for a first post?

Regards

/dev/mwl