grdb anyone?

[weed bucket pp ualr edu]

I'm not sure if anyone has addressed this before, but...

Why is there no Gnome equiv to the KDE krdb program.  For those who aren't
familiar with krdb, I've included the README file (dont't worry it's
pretty short).  Basicly, it takes some templates, plugs in the current KDE
colors and fonts and pipes them to xrdb so Netscape et. al. will look
consistant.

I've started poking around in the krdb source and realized that my c is
_really_ rusty and my c++ is even worse.  Basicly, I think I have a decent
idea, but I lack the skill to pull it off in a timely (or even decent
quality) manner.

1) start by using the *.ad template files in the kdebase package
2) write grdb to get its info from ~/.gtkrc and pipe it to xrdb based on
the *.ad files which we could store somewhere like /usr/share/gnome/grdb/
3) allow for ~/.gnome/grdb/*.ad settings to override system defaults
4) add entries to the Gnome infrastructure to run grdb at login and
whenever a font or color change is commited from the control center.

Whadaya think?

===============================================================================
| Murtaugh: God must hate me.         | Linux, the choice of a Gnu generation |
| Riggs: Hate 'em back, works for me. | http://bucket.ualr.edu/weed           |
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KRDB V0.2

CHANGES V0.2
- use QFontInfo
- general purpose files e.g. AAAMotif.ad thanks to Gerd
  Knorr <kraxel@goldbach.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de>

The krdb utility provides a convenient way to manage the
resources of legacy applications on your KDE desktop.
Simply run krdb every time you want to update the resources
of your supported apps.

You can easily write application default files for your own
applications. To see how, follow the example of the
supplied application default file for XV which specifies

xv*foreground: FOREGROUND
xv*background: BACKGROUND
xv*highlight: HIGHLIGHT
xv*lowlight: LOWLIGHT
xv*monofont: FIXED_FONT

The applications resources assign variables which will be
defined by krdb. The complete list of possible variables to
choose from is

FOREGROUND, BACKGROUND, HIGHLIGHT, LOWLIGHT,
WINDOW_FOREGROUND, WINDOW_BACKGROUND, SELECT_FOREGROUND,
SELECT_BACKGROUND, INACTIVE_FOREGROUND,
INACTIVE_BACKGROUND, INACTIVE_BLEND, ACTIVE_FOREGROUND,
ACTIVE_BACKGROUND, ACTIVE_BLEND, FONT, BOLD_FONT, ITALIC_FONT, 
FIXED_FONT, TITLE_FONT and FONTLIST.

Their meaning should be obvious to anyone familiar with
KDE's desktop wide resources. Install your application
default file either in

$(KDEDIR)/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults

or

$(HOME)/.kde/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults

so that it is available to krdb for reading. If you want to
override a system file simply copy it to your user
directory and make amendments.

The krdb utility works by putting your current KDE color
and font scheme into preprocessor statements, concatenating
the specially written application default files and using
xrdb -merge to write to RESOURCE_MANAGER. Thus it gives a
simple way to make non-KDE applications fit in with the
desktop.

krdb now comes with a set of general purpose configuration
files for the Motif, Xaw and TK toolkits. How well these
general purpose resources apply to specific applications
will depend on what other application defaults are
installed. If you want krdb general resource files to apply
most generally you should not have application specific
entries for similar resources in ~/.Xdefaults or in the
system app-defaults directory e.g.
/usr/lib/X11R6/app-defaults.