25 replies to this topic

[BenBean]

I was hoping that soon you could implement "Decorate buttons" just like you can already "Decorate windows" so that if you were using a windows application the buttons would look just like a Mac native?

[HiPhish]

And what about the rest of the intrface? Checkboxes, text fields, tabs... and Mac buttons right between those? I think that would actually look worse

[syao]

Wine supports windows .msstyle themes (example here with a non-Mac theme), so it would theoretically possible to make stuff look 'almost native' (native feel is another matter, that won't be possible).

Things in practice, though, aren't as good.  From experience, things look definitely ugly, since you see how those styles lack the level of polish a native app has, and even if they're similar, they're still quite different from the real thing (for example see here.
Furthermore, each OS X version the port is running on would require a different .msstyle theme (they have hardcoded pictures for buttons, scrollbars, etc, but they don't use the real ones from the host OS)
Finally, an applied msstyle makes things a lot slower.  Not sure if it's still the case with recent versions, but some apps a few years ago were barely usable on my 2007 MacBook when a .msstyle was applied, while they ran smoothly without.

If you want to try with your own wrappers for personal usage, here you can find some instructions: https://help.ubuntu....8-Skins_In_Wine
They're pretty Ubuntu-centric, but (if you use different colors and themes) the same steps can be applied to get a Mac-like theme.

I don't think such a wrapper would be good to distribute though.  Unless things have changed a lot since my last attempt.

[PommeGolden]

Install a Mac OS X msstyle theme

[Tetsu]

I applied msstyles to a few of my ports and I haven't noticed any change in performance. However up until the most recent revisions of WINE there's been rendering errors with those dialog boxes that do get affected by it such as the config window and startup box for Max Payne. However things seem to be getting better and better with each release. However for many games that go straight away to fullscreen it's pretty unessasary and it still doesn't skin things like scrollbars and when you click on a button it shows the unskinned button temporarily. But if you have any games that use standard windows dialog box it isn't too bad to use an msstyle with recent wine engines as it was in the past.

Here's a couple examples of the aforementioned Dialog Boxes in Max Payne using a "Lion" msstyle:




No it's not perfect and stuff like font rendering still gives it away as a windows app but I like how that looks better than the default WINE look. BTW, the way the buttons on the combo boxes look is due to how the person who ported the theme to Windows made it.. it's not the fault of the uxtheme function in WINE for that particular thing. I used to port Mac themes to windows at one time but I haven't in a long time ever since I switched to an actual Mac.

[doh123]

Where do you get these msstyles themes?

[syao]

Uh, I'm also interested in that style.  I remember using a Leopard style a few years ago, and it caused glitches with some Qt-based applications I was using.  I'd like to check if things are mature enough now.  Mind sharing a link?

[hmtinc]

i want that style .. plz upload

[hmtinc]

nvm i found the style
its also not that buggy

check it out
http://www.mediafire...0aswa46jzihnjj1

[Battlefiler]

cool

[syao]

hmtinc, on 09 April 2012 - 08:08 PM, said:

nvm i found the style
its also not that buggy

check it out
http://www.mediafire...0aswa46jzihnjj1

Not the same.  This one is a Leopard-inspired style, not a Lion one (on a side note, a little glitchy - see screenshot)

[Battlefiler]

jea (´not buggy )

[hmtinc]

lol it doesn't work in the wine cfg  but it does work for dialogs in games like skyrim & ridge racer unbounded

[syao]

Yes, it greatly depends on the application you're using (i.e. here it looks much better).  But it doesn't look good enough to be as a default theme in my opinion.

I'd still like to see the Lion theme, if smoketetsu or anyone else has a link to it and feels like sharing it.

[Tetsu]

I don't remember where I got it but here it is if you wish to try it out. As with anything your mileage may vary. I did a quick search for it but I mostly got hits for the Win7 version and WINE needs an XP version.

https://rapidshare.c...n3.msstyles.zip

You may mirror it or whatever.. I don't claim any ownership I didn't make it... just sharing it. It's not perfect and the tabs show black in winecfg... someone needs to combine the tabs from the above style with the rest from the Lion style.

[Battlefiler]

is there a way to customize win themes for wine ?

[Tetsu]

Perhaps if you wrap an msstyle editor or resource hacker in WINE or do it in Windows. I haven't tried that yet though.... I mean... wrap a resource hacker.

As far as an MS Style editor goes there's this one: http://vistastylebuilder.com/ But I don't know if it supports XP themes which is what is needed for WINE.

I actually never used msstyles in windows and used windowblinds instead but that's no help to here.

This style editor may help us if we can get it to work: http://gamepressure....builder-v2.html

I'm downloading it so I can give it a try. So then I will try fixing the msstyle myself and share what I come up with here. I used to make some mean windows themes for windowblinds. msstyles need 32-bit BMP files which stylebuilder converts to and from PNG so that's the best bet. TGTsoft is not around anymore though.

Unfortunately I'm getting various errors with stylebuilder even just installing it and I'm unable to get the crack working. It crashes with a page fault.

OK this theme's tabs don't look exactly like lion's segmented tabs but there's no rendering errors (black parts in the window) in winecfg with it: http://hilawa.devian...Theme-289508435

This is as good as you'll get for now and of course later WINE revisions show it better than earlier ones (although generally all my engines seem to be showing it with no glaring black button errors) the push buttons also look closer to Lion:

[syao]

Thanks smoketetsu, the Lion theme looks better than the Leopard one.  I don't understand, though, why I still get black graphics, and something (i.e. the slider) doesn't quite look like your screenshot (taken on a blank wine 1.5.1 wineskin 2.5.4 wrapper):


I wonder if it's the fault of my Intel HD chip, I'll try it on an ATI based Mac when I get back home.

If it wasn't for those glitches and some small imperfections here and there (fonts having the wrong width and being cut in some labels), this theme could even be shipped as the default theme in my opinion.

[Tetsu]

Yeah the sliders look different depending on window and I did say the tabs still have errors in them in winecfg. It's not your GPUs fault it happened with my ATI GPU too.

Check out the second theme I posted here (http://hilawa.devian...Theme-289508435) you can download that theme there. The sliders look different still but there are no errors as far as I can tell.... there are a couple of different kinds of sliders in Windows and they can be skinned differently.

My latest screenshots are from the second newer Lion XP theme.

[syao]

smoketetsu, on 10 April 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

Check out the second theme I posted here (http://hilawa.devian...Theme-289508435) you can download that theme there. The sliders look different still but there are no errors as far as I can tell.... there are a couple of different kinds of sliders in Windows and they can be skinned differently.

Oops, my fault, I mistakenly assumed it was the same theme.

Yes, this one looks much better, with no black areas at all, even though I still have a few remarks (fonts, wrong rollover effect on the push buttons).

[Tetsu]

Yeah some of that may be bugs with WINE's uxtheme implementation others are the fault of the person who made the theme in windows. If I could get a theme editor going in WINE I could probably fix the errors that are on the themers end. The rollover effect on the push buttons is easiest to fix if one finds a way to export\import the 32-bit BMP files the themes use. But I think it showing the regular button when pushed might be a bug that needs to be fixed in WINE's uxtheme implementation for example. There are elements which aren't skinned yet by WINE's uxtheme implementation like scrollbars or toolbox borders.

If I find an even better theme than that one or a way to edit it in Mac I'll post it here though.

I'm not sure what to do about the fonts. The font rendering in WINE isn't good in general and I'm not sure what font the person used or how you could change it in an msstyle. I tried adding in a font smoothing option into my wine config using winetricks and putting in a lucida grande ttf in case that's what he used (although he could have used lucida sans unicode instead or some other variant.. there are a couple floating around in the skinning community that mimics mac on Windows that I used to be a part of). Anyway, font rendering was pretty crappy in XP too and generally speaking it looks in wine like it does in XP with font smoothing off. But even with it on in XP it never looked as good as in OS X unless one used an override utility that replaced the font rendering with a version of freetype. I doubt that utility would work in WINE though. You can't just plop the dll into your system folder and have it automagically work. It needs an .exe to load it up and override the font rendering. That sort of thing generally needs to run all the time in the background, hooks into your apps and override and that sort of thing doesn't work with WINE. It's something they need to work on in WINE itself.

[syao]

I haven't had much luck with the TGTsoft software in wine (FWIW it works in a windows VM...), but if you open the .msstyles file in Resource Hacker it contains (other than all the BMPs) some text files where fonts and colors are set.  I haven't tried yet, but it should be possible to use a font that looks less fuzzy.  In the Lion msstyle it looks like they used a mix of Lucida Sans and Lucida Grande for different UI elements.

[PommeGolden]

those dark rectangles are probably caused by the new (buggy) DIB engine... please file a bug report to wine if you want it to be fixed...

[doh123]

I guess we could add in an option in Wineskin.app to apply msstyles?  maybe have a few decent built in ones, and an option to specify your own?  might make it easier.

I think I'd leave hem all off by default... unless we got a really good one that always looked good.

[Tetsu]

It's not that hard to install your own right now though. Just open winecfg, go to the desktop integration tab, click on install, browse to the msstyle then pick from the drop down list the style you want and click on apply. If you could make it so you can have one automatically applied when you create a new wrapper though that would be handy.. or a global one that could be set from the winery.

That last lion theme I got looks good at most times. I mean.. it doesn't do any black boxes or anything. However for the time being no style skins stuff like scrollbars and sometimes it doesn't skin anything. During those times those elements look like you don't have a theme applied.

But the former is a current limitation of the uxtheme engine in WINE and the latter.... well that sometimes happens in windows too and sometimes one can get around it by creating a uxtheme manifest file for a particular program and putting it in the same folder as the .exe. I don't know if that works with WINE though as I don't know if they implemented that particular aspect of theming in Windows.

[Honorbrachios]

smoketetsu, on 10 April 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

Yeah the sliders look different depending on window and I did say the tabs still have errors in them in winecfg. It's not your GPUs fault it happened with my ATI GPU too.

Check out the second theme I posted here (http://hilawa.devian...Theme-289508435) you can download that theme there. The sliders look different still but there are no errors as far as I can tell.... there are a couple of different kinds of sliders in Windows and they can be skinned differently.

My latest screenshots are from the second newer Lion XP theme.

Thank you, this great skin work really nice for me !


Edit : should be nice if you can change the blue wallpaper (while launching in full screen) by the original black one.