Being able to load a custom theme is great, but it would be even better if we didn’t have to manually install one.

Well, recent changes in nodgui from yesterday and today just dramatically improved the GUI situation for Common Lisp[0].

nodgui now ships the yaru theme

@cage commited the Yaru theme from ttkthemes in nodgui’s repository, and we added QoL improvements. To use it, now you can simply do:

(with-nodgui ()
  (use-theme "yaru")
  …)

or

(with-nodgui (:theme "yaru")
  …)

or

(setf nodgui:*default-theme* "yaru")
(with-nodgui ()
  …)

Yaru looks like this:

"yaru theme list box and buttons"

"yaru theme treeview"

"yaru theme"

No, it isn’t native, but it doesn’t look like the 50s either.

See my previous post for more themes, screenshots and instructions to load a third-party theme. Forest Light is nice too!

Try the demos

Try the demos with this theme:

(setf nodgui:*default-theme* "yaru")
(nodgui.demo:demo)
;; or
(nodgui.demo:demo :theme "yaru")
;; a precise demo
(nodgui.demo::demo-widget :theme "yaru")

Themes directory

@cage also made it easier to load a theme.

I have added the special variable *themes-directory* (default is the directory themes under the directory where the asdf system is) where the library looks for themes.

Each theme must be placed in their own directory as a subdirectory of the aforementioned variable, the name of the directory must be the name of the theme; moreover the name of the TCL file that specify the file must be named as the same of the theme with the extension “tcl” appended

For example, the theme “foo” has to be: “foo/foo.tcl”

Provided these conditions are met using a new theme should be as simple as type (nodgui:use-theme "foo"), without (nodgui: eval-tcl-file).

Otherwise, just clone a theme repository somewhere, and call

(eval-tcl-file "path/to/the/theme.tcl")
(use-theme "theme")

I can very well imagine using small GUI tools built in Tk and this theme. I’ll have to try nogui’s auto-complete widget too. If you do build a little something, please share, it will help and inspire me and the ones after you.

[0]: be more grandiose if you can.