D.6 GTK resources
If Emacs was built to use the GTK widget set, then the menu bar,
scroll bar and the dialogs are customized with the standard GTK
customization file, ~/.gtkrc-2.0, or with the Emacs specific
file ~/.emacs.d/gtkrc. We recommend that you use
~/.emacs.d/gtkrc for customizations, since ~/.gtkrc-2.0
seems to be ignored when running GConf with GNOME. These files apply
only to GTK widget features. To customize Emacs font, background,
faces, etc., use the normal X resources (see Resources).
Some GTK themes override these mechanisms, which means that using
these mechanisms will not work to customize them.
In these files you first define a style and say what it means; then
you specify to apply the style to various widget types (see GTK widget names). Here is an example of how to change the font for
Emacs menus:
# Define the style ‘metafont’.
style "menufont"
{
font_name = "helvetica bold 14" # This is a Pango font name
}
# Specify that widget type ‘*emacs-menuitem*’ uses ‘metafont’.
widget "*emacs-menuitem*" style "menufont"
Here is a more elaborate example, showing how to change the parts of
the scroll bar:
style "scroll"
{
fg[NORMAL] = "red" # The arrow color.
bg[NORMAL] = "yellow" # The thumb and background around the arrow.
bg[ACTIVE] = "blue" # The trough color.
bg[PRELIGHT] = "white" # The thumb color when the mouse is over it.
}
widget "*verticalScrollBar*" style "scroll"
There are also parameters that affect GTK as a whole. For example,
the property gtk-font-name sets the default font for GTK. You
must use Pango font names (see GTK styles). A GTK resources file
that just sets a default font looks like this:
gtk-font-name = "courier 12"
The GTK resources file is fully described in the GTK API document.
This can be found in
prefix/share/gtk-doc/html/gtk/gtk-resource-files.html,
where prefix is the directory in which the GTK libraries were
installed (usually /usr or /usr/local). You can also
find the document online, at
https://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/gtk-Resource-Files.html.
