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Pidgin Background image

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ImmortalMonkey
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Pidgin Background image

The two best Instant Messengers out there are Miranda and Pidgin. Miranda with a ton of plugins allows you to manipulate just about everything, you name it you can do it in Miranda but this level of complexity is more suited for those who love to tinker.

Then there is Pidgin, Pidgin take a no frills approach to it's instant messenger, staying ahead of the rest(in my opinion) of the other universal IM's in the way of protocols and stability, this basic approach is more for the "Set it and Forget it" crowd that is not interested in pushing the envelope of tweaking the application.

I like both applications and often find myself going back and forth between them but lately with Pidgin I have gotten tired of looking at it's dull white screen so I set out to see if the ability exists to change the background an sure enough you can, so after some digging and experimenting I have my Pidgin running with a cool background.

See here:
http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/1.png

The following is what I found and how I added a background image to my Pidgin Portable IM:

1. Start by finding the "gtkrc" file in the following directory:
\PortableApps\PidginPortable\Data\settings

2. Open "gtkrc" with a text editor and add the following code:

Copy below this line------------------------------------------------------------

#The following line is the path where you choose to keep your background images:
pixmap_path "./Data/settings/.purple/backgrounds"
style "my-blist" {
#The follwoing line is the name of your background image:
bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "NCC1701-5.png"
text[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
#this makes the text white, if you want black, take this code:
#text[NORMAL] = "#000000"
bg[NORMAL] = "#993300"
base[NORMAL] = "#993300"
GtkTreeView::odd_row_color = ""
GtkTreeView::even_row_color = ""
}
widget "*pidgin_blist_treeview" style "my-blist"

Copy above this line------------------------------------------------------------

The pixmap_path starts at the PidginPortable directory.

The text[NORMAL] line will change the font color of the buddy list categories, in my case I had to use white against my background, use this web site to change the #ffffff value to something to your liking if you are not actually going to use a background image:

http://www.psyclops.com/tools/rgb/

Finding actual backgrounds for Pidgin is next to impossible so I had to create my own, the following is my background and then a couple others I found:

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/NCC1701-5.png

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/fedora_bg.jpg

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/pidgin-background.png

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/fedpidbg.png

I hope this helps and makes sense.

Paul.

---------------------------------------------------
Edit - 10/14/09 Added a few more backgrounds

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/BSG2.png

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/discovery.png

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/hal9000.png

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/predator1.png
----------------------------------------------------
Edit - 4-5-2011 One more background

http://www.archiefamily.com/users/Paul/images/drwho1.png

gluxon
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Thanks I'll try this out in

Thanks Smile

I'll try this out in my free time.

ceciliaFX
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I added your images to

I added your images to "Data/settings/.purple/backgrounds"

added the text to that file "gtkrc"

what I see is a brownish colored background. I changed to a different background image and still the brown color

no image

whyizzat?

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

ImmortalMonkey
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Dunno

Show me the contents of the gtkrc file.

ceciliaFX
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first two lines already existed in the file.

I kept them unchanged (as I don't know enough about them to change that)

--------------------------------------
gtk-font-name = "sans 8"

gtk-theme-name = "MS-Windows"

#The following line is the path where you choose to keep your background images:
pixmap_path "./Data/settings/.purple/backgrounds"
style "my-blist" {
#The follwoing line is the name of your background image:
bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "NCC1701-5.png"
text[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
#this makes the text white, if you want black, take this code:
#text[NORMAL] = "#000000"
bg[NORMAL] = "#993300"
base[NORMAL] = "#993300"
GtkTreeView::odd_row_color = ""
GtkTreeView::even_row_color = ""
}
widget "*pidgin_blist_treeview" style "my-blist"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

btw, this is tested on Windows2000. I have not yet tried this on my XP

not sure if would make any difference.

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

ImmortalMonkey
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I assume you are using the

I assume you are using the latest version of Pidgin.

So to start you created a folder called "backgrounds" as seen in the following path?

pixmap_path "./Data/settings/.purple/backgrounds"

The full path location is this:
/PortableApps/PidginPortable/Data/settings/.purple/backgrounds

Then you downloaded my background image NCC1701-5.png and put it in the backgrounds folder you created in the first step.

If you are seeing the color change in the buddy list of Pidgin then that means the application is at least reading the file so now it's a matter of making sure that path and file location is correct.

ceciliaFX
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yup, the path is absolutely

yup, the path is absolutely correct

yes, it's the newest pidgin

and i just opened the Trek image in GIMP to make sure it wasn't corrupted when downloaded. seems fine

weird!

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

ceciliaFX
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just tried this on XP and the

just tried this on XP and the background image shows up - most def a win2000 issue

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

ImmortalMonkey
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Mystery solved, glad you got

Mystery solved, glad you got it to work.

ceciliaFX
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yeah, it gets interesting

yeah, it gets interesting have a three-multiboot system Smile

love the new images you have there!

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

ImmortalMonkey
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Upgrading? Save your gtkrc file.

If you upgrade Pidgin keep a copy of your existing gtkrc file, the upgrade process installs a new one.

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