They might be stored somewhere else on you computer, or in another directory since you use a non-official version?

Indeed, your DarkNice theme looks like aurora midnight (with the comic sans ms heresy ;p), and mine doesn't.
Correction: AFAICS, you seem to use a kind of aurora-midnight modified theme but with clearlooks engine buttons instead of aurora buttons and I suspect that if you have those buttons than you have the clearlooks dll somewhere..


The infamous DLLs nightmare again, I suppose

I can confirm that the DarkNice gtkrc calls for an "engine", if I get it right, this would be the call:



So I must search for a mysterious clearlooks... Let's go...
Ok, clearlooks found, this is a dll, I have it in the .../engines folder, there must be something I'm missing.
Now, browsing the net...
Apparently, I may need a kind of gtk theme switcher, it reminds me of the gimp-themes 1.0. Tested. Some gave me errors, some launched and modified the .gtk2rc-2.0 file located in my user folder, btw this file clearly states and controls what font and what theme my gimp build 2.6 uses but it has no effect on my other gimp 2.8

You, sir, have what I want, you are running aurora-midnight on 2.8 !
Please state the content of your GIMP-2.8\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\ engines\ folder, you undoubtedly have the DLLs needed for this theme to launch correctly.

If you use the old DLL files you will have problems with dialog information vanishing and re appearing on mouse over.I believe Partha (the version i am using), has the clearlooks dll installed in the engine directory.
F:\Gimp-2.8-32bit-Partha\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\engines
So i guess the dll file was there...silly me.

Ok, I've read the entire thread once again.
This is not crystal clear yet but I'm beginnning to understand how the things work and where are the flaws. AFAIK, any gimp 2.8 version (be it portable, installed, 32 or 64 bits, winXP or win7) should be able to get partial theme working, because any gimp 2.8 version should launch themes thanks to the gtkrc file. Partially, because some of us do not have the correct DLLs embedded in our gimp version.

So far, from the various screenshots I saw here, only MareroQ succeeded in using a fully working theme on 2.8 (with the correct engines, the DLLs) and it should be noted that he does not use a 64bits version.

@Rod:
Could you post a screenshot of Aurora-Midnight theme running on your portable gimp 2.8 32bits partha build ? Thus I'll see if you, like mareroQ, have also a working aurora engine.

Note: The gimp 32 bits partha portable version can launch aurora engine (while the 64 bits can't), but with the disappearing menus problem, this is the aurora dll I used in gimp 2.6, dll from 2008, dead end again.

I'll see if I can find another engine that makes the aurora theme look better.

Got it. Try using the Crux-engine. Place this file (right-click save as) in your engines folder.
http://photoplace.googlecode.com/svn-hi ... engine.dll

sidenote: libcrux-engine is already delivered with my build, I've tried your dll instead and I don't see any clear difference.

So, I made the gtkrc calls for crux-engine instead of aurora, and indeed the menus don't disappear. However, aurora-midnight uses settings to control the aurora engine, settings that don't give the same result in crux-engine.

But, as I was in the process to make a DarkNice modified gtkrc aiming at a wannabe aurora-midnight feeling, I tried using crux-engine instead of clearlooks engine and it gives some promising results: the buttons have 3dish gradient and it almost feels like aurora but there's still a drawback, the engine draws lightgrey and white borders around some buttons which ruin the feeling a bit. I'm searching now to finetune the crux-engine (in the gtkrc) to eliminate those borders.

Edit: I didn't found the specific settings for the crux engine yet, but I found a documented gtkrc file: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=377397 this will help me understand.

Here are screenshots of my theme.
Loader bar


Buttons


Menus


Dialogs


I don't know how much closer to Aurora you can get than that without dialog problems.

I also added the contents of the "small" gtkrc to my .gimp-2.8 gtkrc file. So i can use small icons with it.

Where did you get the Wilber clock Rod? BTW, what are all those icons across the bottom or is it the top of you screen. There must be a hundred there. I never saw that before.