Xfce traditional looking Desktop icon labels

[Linadian]

Note: This works for me in Debian stable Xfce 4.8.

If you do this your icon labels (the text beneath the icons on your Desktop only) will be white with a black shadow beneath them (2 pixel x/y offset) and no text label background when not selected, just a slight translucent background when selected. This overrides your theme's settings only for the Desktop icon label text and text backgrounds.

A sample pic of what it will look like (click the pic after it loads to go full size):


Create a text file in your home folder called .gtkrc-2.0 (include the period for hidden, enable 'Show Hidden Files' temporarily in Thunar file manager's view settings to work with it), copy and paste this in to the file and save it:

Code: Select all

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
  ## opacity of text background (0 - 255, 0 = transparent)
  XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0
  XfdesktopIconView::selected-label-alpha = 100

  ## text background colors
  base[NORMAL]    = "#EDECEB"
  base[ACTIVE]    = shade (0.8, "#86ABD9")
  base[SELECTED]  = "#86ABD9"

  ## text foreground colors
  fg[NORMAL]      = shade (0.9, "#FFFFFF")
  fg[ACTIVE]      = shade (0.8, "#FFFFFF")
  fg[SELECTED]    = "#FFFFFF"

  ## whether or not unselected icon text gets truncated (...)
  # XfdesktopIconVIew::ellipsize-icon-labels = 1

  ## text shadow to be painted with the icon labels
  XfdesktopIconView::shadow-x-offset = 2
  XfdesktopIconView::shadow-y-offset = 2
  XfdesktopIconView::shadow-color = "#000000"
  XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-x-offset = 2
  XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-y-offset = 2
  XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-color = "#000000"

  ## spacing and sizing of icons on the grid
  # XfdesktopIconVIew::cell-spacing = 6
  # XfdesktopIconView::cell-padding = 6
  # XfdesktopIconView::cell-text-width-proportion = 2.5
}
widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"

Now log out and back in to take effect. If you don't like it, I believe just deleting the file and logging out and back in again will reset your theme's values.

Edited for grammar.