Needed packages:
- gtk2-engines (optionally gtk2-engines-*)
- lxappearance or gtk-chtheme
- gcolor2 + $EDITOR (leafpad, nano, emacs, vi, ...) OR geany
Lazy people jump to the short version
Long version:
1) Firstly, choose a theme using the GTK theme chooser application. We need the name of the theme we want to customize. In this example, I take the 'Mist' theme.
2) Create a copy of the theme, lets call it BarbieQ; and place it either as normal user into ~/.themes/BarbieQ or as root into /usr/share/themes/BarbieQ
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sudo mkdir /usr/share/themes/BarbieQ
sudo cp -R /usr/share/themes/Mist/* /usr/share/themes/BarbieQ
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sudo leafpad /usr/share/themes/BarbieQ/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
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gtk-color-scheme = "bg_color:#2D2D2D\ [...etc...]
6) We do the same as in step 4) for the next values. nfg is the normal foreground colour of the window, so let's change it to something bright, like #DDDDDD. The line now looks like this:
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gtk-color-scheme =
"bg_color:#2d2d2d\nfg_color:#DDDDDD\ [...etc...]
8) The nbase color is the color of the background in text fields. I leave it white now. The ntext is the text color for text fields. Be sure that these two values are 'far' from each other in contrast, to make reading easier.
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gtk-color-scheme =
"bg_color:#2d2d2d\nfg_color:#DDDDDD\nbase_color:#fff\ntext_color:#000\ [...etc...]
10) Finally, we set the most important color, the selection color. it's blue now, which is quite low contrast on a dark grey background. Let's make it light grey: #9A9A9A
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gtk-color-scheme =
"bg_color:#2d2d2d\nfg_color:#DDDDDD\nbase_color:#fff
\ntext_color:#000\nselected_fg_color:#fff\nselected_bg_color:#9A9A9A"
Short version:
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sudo apt-get install gtk-theme-config
So this was a very rough and quick HOWTO, not detailing the stuff like shading and contrasting inside of the theme.
Also, this is not applicable 1:1 for Openbox window decorations and the root menu. I'll cover that on another occasion.
Hope it helps some who are new to Linux.