debian etch + kde 3.5.5 + firefox 3 (GTK applications with QT style)

#20080630#20080701

#Please note : these instructions are “high” level instructions . I mean: much of the details are not explained. If anyone is interested we can talk about it more !

#Please note : The gtk application must make use of the $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0 rc file. Or adjust everything according to the actual configuration of the application.

Also GTk+ applications can make use of the Qt widget styles while KDE is running. If you are using KDE 3.5.5 in debian etch, it is possible to allow this behavior first installing the following package through aptitude/synaptic

• gtk-qt-engine

and then configuring the environment using the newly installed KDE module named “GTK Styles and Fonts”.

You can access this module from the KDE Control Center – section “Appearence & Themes”.

This new module will give you the ability to choose wether GTK applications will have the same theme as your KDE applications or have their own gtk theme. The new module will also let you choose which set of fonts GTK applications will use while KDE is running.

If Firefox 3, as well as the gtk+ libraries that firefox needs, have been installed in your home directory it can’t make use of the newly installed engine.

At present I don’t know how I can set the path of installed engines. So I tried this workaround, that seems to work here: installing the  gtk-qt-engine 0.7 also in $HOME/<folderofchoice>.

#PLEASE NOTE:PLEASE NOTE: In my system executing the following step 3 leads to an “installation error” : THe script tries to write to a folder for which as a user I do not have writing permissions. It is odd: the script should not write outside of our $HOME … But it seems that the core gtk-qt-engine library is succesfully installed in $HOME. So be careful, and if You find a solution, write back !

1. I fetched version 0.7 of gtk-qt-engine from here.
2. I installed the following packages using aptitude/synaptic :
   • g++;
   • qt3-dev-tools;
   • kdebase-dev;
3. I installed in $HOME/<folderofchoice> the just fetched engine. I did this step as a non root user, with its drawbacks. But I like it and it s convenient to my system.
   • Open a console.
   • Unzip and untar the package somewhere in the home folder.
   • Change the current working directory to the main gtk-qt-engine package directory.
   • Modify the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH so that its content is the path to gtk+ 2.12.10’s pkgconfig directory. Oh, well here we go if you are using BASH :
     export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/<folderofchoice>/lib/pkgconfig.
   • Modify the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH so that its content is the path to the gtk+ 2.12.10’s libraries. If you are using BASH here is the command
     export LD_RUN_PATH=$HOME/<folderofchoice>/lib
   • Execute the script configure located in the gtk-qt-engine main folder. I had to pass configure the following parameter –prefix=$HOME/<folderofchoice> so that the gtk-qt-engine could be completely rooted to <folderofchoice>. The command was the following : ./configure –prefix=$HOME/<folderofchoice>.
   • Execute the command make install. After that you should have gtk-qt-engines built and rooted in a subfolder of $HOME/<folderofchoice>. To test this you can ls the contents of $HOME/<folderofchoice>/lib/gtk-2.0.

3 – I set up the gtk applications to use the qt widget styles using the KDE module “GTK Styles and Fonts”.

4 – I modified the script that starts firefox 3 so that it uses the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 rc file.

… and then firefox 3 is visually well integrated in kde 3.5.5

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