Gnome Display Manager Reference Manual
Graphical Greeter Themes
This section describes the creation of themes for the Graphical
Greeter. For examples including screenshots, see the standard installed
themes and the themes from
the theme website.
Theme Overview
GDM Themes can be created by creating an XML file that follows the
specification in gui/greeter/greeter.dtd. Theme files are stored
in the directory <share>/gdm/themes/<theme_name>.
Usually this would be under /usr/share. The theme directory should contain a
file called GdmGreeterTheme.desktop which has similar format to other
.desktop files and looks like:
[GdmGreeterTheme]
Encoding=UTF-8
Greeter=circles.xml
Name=Circles
Description=Theme with blue circles
Author=Bond, James Bond
Copyright=(c) 2002 Bond, James Bond
Screenshot=screenshot.png
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The Name, Description, Author and Copyright fields can be translated just
like the other .desktopfiles. All the files that are mentioned should
be in the theme directory itself. The Screenshot field points to a file
which should be a 200x150 screenshot of the theme in action (it is OK
not to have one, but it makes it nicer for user). The Greeter field points
to an XML file that contains the description of the theme. The description
will be given later.
Once you have theme ready and installed you can test it with the installed
gdmthemetester script. This script assumes that you also have installed
the Xnest X server. It takes two arguments, first the environment that
should be used. This is one of console, console-timed, flexi, remote-flexi,
xdmcp. Where console is a standard console login, console-timed is a
console login with a timed login going on, flexi is for any local
flexible server, remote-flexi is for flexi server that is not local (such
as an Xnest flexiserver run from a remote display) and xdmcp is for remote
xdmcp connections. The second argument is the theme name. So for example
to test how things look in the xdmcp mode with the circles theme you would
run:
gdmthemetester xdmcp circles |
how the caps lock warning looks by pressing caps lock. This is also a good
way to take screenshots, just take a screenshot of the Xnest window. This
can be done in GNOME by focusing the Xnest window and pressing
Alt-PrintScreen.
Once you have all this done, then make a tarball that contains the directory
name (so that you could just untar it in the /usr/share/gdm/themes directory).
And this is the tarball you distribute and people can install from the
graphical setup program. You can do this with the commands:
cd /usr/share/gdm/themes
tar czvf <theme_name>.tar.gz <theme_name>/
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Detailed Description of Theme XML format
Box Nodes
Box nodes are container nodes for item nodes. Box nodes are
specified as follows:
<box orientation="alignment" min-width="num" xpadding="num"
ypadding="num" spacing="num" homogeneous="bool">
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or "false". The alignment value can be either "horizontal" or "vertical".
If you leave any property off it will default to
zero or "false" in case of "homogeneous", and "vertical" for
the orientation.
If the box is homogeneous then the children are allocated equal
amount of space.
The "min-width" must be specified in pixels. Obviously there is
also a corresponding "min-height" property as well.
Fixed Nodes
Fixed is a container that just has it's children scattered about
layed out with precise coordinates. The size of this container
is the biggest rectangle that contains all the children. Fixed
has no extra properties and so you just use:
<fixed> |
The "toplevel" node is really just like a fixed node.
Item Nodes
A GDM Theme is created by specifying a hierarchy of item and box
nodes. Item nodes can have the following value for "type":
- entry
Text entry field.
- list
A list widget.
- label
A text label. Must have a "text" node to specify the text.
- pixmap
An pixmap image in a format that gdk-pixbuf supports like
PNG, JPEG, Tiff, etc...)- rect
Rectangle.
- svg
Scaled Vector Graphic image.
For example:
<item type="label"> |
and feel or formatting. Furthermore you can customize the login
process by adding custom widgets with custom id's for some items
(currently only the list item)
Entry items can have id values as follows:
- user-pw-entry
Entry field for userid and password entry. This is
the field used for responses for the PAM/GDM questions
(Username, Password, etc..).
List items can have id values as follows:
- userlist
A user browser list, so that users can pick
their username by clicking on this instead
of typing.
Furthermore, you can have an arbitrary id (I'd recommend starting
the id with 'custom' not to conflict with future additions to this
spec) and ask extra information of the user. See the section
'Custom Widgetry'
Label items can have id values as follows:
- clock
Label the displays the date and time.
- pam-prompt
Label the displays PAM prompt. This is the prompt that
PAM uses to ask for username, password, etc...- pam-error
Label the displays PAM/GDM error messages. Such as when
user can't log in.- pam-message
Label the displays PAM message. These are messages that
PAM/GDM gives about state of the account, help about the
prompts and other information.- timed-label
Label that displays timed login information.
Rectangles can have id values as follows:
- caps-lock-warning
Displays an icon that shows if the
CAPS LOCK key is depressed. This rectangle
will be hidden/shown appropriately
If an item is of type rect, the item can be a button. Buttons
must also include a "button" value as follows:
<item type="rect" id="disconnect_button" button="true">. |
Possible values for button ids are as follows:
- chooser_button
Runs the XDMCP chooser.
- config_button
Runs the GDM Setup program.
- disconnect_button
Disconnect from remote session.
- language_button
Displays the language selection dialog.
- halt_button
Halt (shuts down) the system.
- reboot_button
Reboot the system.
- session_button
List and select from available sessions.
- suspend_button
Suspend the system.
- system_button
Perform halt/reboot/suspend/etc. options
(if allowed by gdm configuration). Also
allows user to run configurator if user
enters root password (again if allowed
by gdm configuration). This is usually
now labeled Actions, and referred to as
the Actions menu.
Position Node
Each item can specify its position and size via the "pos" node.
For example:
<pos x="0" y="4" width="100%" height="100%"/> |
Both position and size can be given in percent and it will be taken
as the percentage of the size of the current container. For toplevel
items it's the percentage of the whole screen.
For x and y, you can also specify a negative position which means position
from the right or bottom edge. But this only applies with absolute
coordinates. With percentage you can specify negative position and
it will be still from the same edge.
The position also specifies the anchor of the item, this can be
"n", "ne", "e", "se", "s", "sw", "w" and "nw" or "center" which stand
for the different edges/corners or "center" for center. For example:
<pos x="10%" y="50%" anchor="w" width="80%" height="95"/> |
If the item contains a box, you can specify width and height to be
"box" to mean that they are supposed to be the width and height
of the box, that is the items in the box plus the padding.
You can also specify an "expand" property to either be "true"
or false. If true then the child will be expanded in the box
as much as possible (that is it will be given more space if available).
There are two extra properties you can specify (as of 2.4.4.3) for
labels (and labels only). The first
is "max-width" which will specify the maximum width of the label in
pixels. And the second is "max-screen-percent-width" which specifies
the maximum percentage of the screen width that the label can occupy.
By default no label will occupy more then 90% of the screen by width.
An example may be:
<item type="label">
<pos x="10%" max-screen-percent-width="50%"/>
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Show Node
Some items may only display in certain modes, like when doing a
remote display. Multiple values can be specified and must be
separated with commas. The following values are possible:
console - In console mode.
console-fixed - In console non-flexi mode.
console-flexi - In console & flexi mode.
flexi - In flexi mode.
remote - In remote mode.
remote-flexi - In remote & flexi mode.
For example:
<show modes="flexi,remote"/> |
You can also specify the "type" value to indicate that certain
items should only be displayed if the type is true. Valid values
include the following:
chooser, if ChooserButton is set to "true" in gdm.conf file.
config, if ConfigAvailable is set to "true" in gdm.conf file.
halt, if HaltDaemon is specified in gdm.conf file.
reboot, if RebootCommand is specified in gdm.conf file.
suspend, if SuspendCommand is specified in gdm.conf file.
system, if SystemMenu is specified in gdm.conf file
timed, if TimedLoginEnabled is set to "true" in gdm.conf file.
For example:
<show modes="console" type="system"/> |
Note that if SystemMenu is off then all of halt, reboot, suspend, chooser
and config will not show, so this is a global toggle for them all.
See some of the standard themes for how the show modes are used.
Normal/Active/Prelight Nodes
Depending on the item type, it can specify its color, font, or
image via the following tags:
normal - normal state.
active - when the item has active focus.
prelight - when the mouse is hovering over the item.
When item is "rect" (alpha can be omitted and defaults to 0.0):
<normal color="#ffffff" alpha="0.0"> |
When item is "label":
<normal color="#ffffff" font="Sans 14"/> |
When the item type is "pixmap" or "SVG", then the normal, active,
and prelight tags specify the images to use as follows:
<normal file="picture.png" tint="#dddddd"/> |
Note that relative pathnames are assumed to be in the same
directory as the theme .xml file in
<share>/gdm/themes/<theme_name>.
Text Node
Text tags are used by labels. They can be used to display
localized text as follows (if the "xml:lang" attribute is
omitted, the C locale is assumed):
<text xml:lang="fr">Option</text> |
You can include pango markup in the text nodes for labels, however
you must encode it. So for example to have the label of
"foo<sup>bar</sup>", you must type:
<text">foo<sup>bar</sup></text> |
Stock
Certain common localized labels can be specified via the stock
tags. The "text" tag is ignored if the "stock" tag is used. You
should really use the stock labels rather then just putting all
the translations into the themes. This gives faster load times
and likely better translations. The following values are valid:
caps-lock-warning, _("You've got capslock on!")
chooser, _("_XDMCP Chooser")
disconnect, _("D_isconnect")
halt, _("Shut_down")
language, _("_Language")
quit, _("_Quit")
reboot, _("_Reboot")
session, _("_Session")
suspend, _("Sus_pend")
system, _("_Actions") (Formerly "S_ystem")
timed-label, _("User %s will login in %d seconds")
username-label, _("Username:")
welcome-label, _("Welcome to %h")
For example:
<stock type="welcome-label"/> |
Custom Widgetry
Currently there is one item which can be customizable and this is
the list item. If you need to ask the user extra things, such as
to pick from a list of places to log into, or set of custom login
sessions you can setup the list item and add listitem children that
describe the choices. Each listitem must have an id and a text child.
The choice will be recorded in the file
<ServAuthDir>/<display>.GreeterInfo
as <list id>=<listitem id>.
For example suppose we are on display :0, ServAuthDir
is /var/gdm
and we have the following in the theme:
<item type="list" id="custom-config">
<pos anchor="nw" x="1" y="1" height="200" width="100"/>
<listitem id="foo">
<text>Foo</text>
</listitem>
<listitem id="bar">
<text>Bar</text>
</listitem>
</item>
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Then if the user chooses 'Foo' then /var/gdm/:0.GreeterInfo will
contain:
custom-config=foo |
Org. Link
