What is a theme engine??
 

Well there just a lot of terms related to linux GUI... I'd be grateful if somebody could tell me what a theme engine is... what does it exactly do to a WM??? How different is it from a window decorator??

Can somebody kindly point me to a tutorial on linux themes????


Thanks in advance,
firewiz

Are you sure it has to do with a WM?

I am pretty unclear about the topic myself... please correct me if i am wrong... As far as i understand, window decorators are part of a WM or rather it helps the WM to style the window borders.... I really dont understand theme engines..

I thought theme engines were for GUI widget toolkits, but there might be window manager theme engines. I'm not really clear on the topic myself.

The whole concept of themes in linux is quite confusing.... especially since I started using Arch... things that were previously invisible is now wonderfully visible... the arch way rocks...!!

I found things like "install murrine theme engine" on various theme sites... what does this murrine thing do as part of a theme...

@MTK358: I cant help saying the links in your signature are really good...

The Murrine Theme Engine has nothing to do with window managers or window decorators whatsoever.

Remembetr that the window manager is completely separate of what's drawn inside the widnow. An application can either draw what it wants, or use a widget toolkit that has predefined GUI controls ready to use.

Murrine is a theme engine for the GTK+ widget toolkit. The theme engine actually draws the widgets. Themes tell the engine how to draw them (and different engines have different stuff they can draw).

so WM draws the windows, window decorator styles the windows (its border etc) and theme engine styles whats inside the window like panels and widgets??

Can multiple theme engines be used together???

Remember, the window frame and the inside of the window are independent and unrelated. The only reason that might cause you to think they are is that there is a theme by the same name for the widgets and window frame, but actually they are separate.

There are many widget toolkits, the most common are GTK+ and Qt (note that Qt isn't just a GUI toolkit, it has cross-platform APIs for just about everything from strings to networking).

They are different and use different theme engines.