Make Eclipse Font Smaller in Gnome/Xfce

There are a lot of posts on the Internet. Here are the one working for me:

• To make the menu font smaller
  • create ~/.gtkrc-eclipse

    style "eclipse" {
      font_name = "Sans 9"
    }
    
    class "GtkWidget" style "eclipse"

  • If you want the buttons are more compact, please follow this page. I use like this, but have a problem the color of menu items on the menu bar is same as the background.

    style "eclipse" {
      font_name = "Sans 9"
    }
    
    class "GtkWidget" style "eclipse"
    
    style "compact-toolbar" {
        GtkToolbar::internal-padding = 0
        xthickness = 1
        ythickness = 1
    }
    
    style "compact-button" {
        xthickness = 0
        ythickness = 0
    }
    
    class "GtkToolbar" style "compact-toolbar"
    widget_class "*<GtkToolbar>*<GtkButton>" style "compact-button"
    

  • add this line into ~/.bashrc

    export GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:$HOME/.gtkrc-eclipse 
    

• To make the tab font smaller, such as "Package Explorer", you need to modify the css file (version # could be different).

  $ vi $ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.2.v201302041200/css/e4_default_gtk.css
  
  .MPartStack {
          font-size: 9;
          swt-simple: false;
          swt-mru-visible: false;
  }
  

  You may try to make the height of tabs smaller as suggested in this page, but I found it didn't work well because the buttons like 'minimum' or 'maximum' become too small and large when the mouse is hovering.

  .MPartStack {
    font-size: 9;
    font-family: Liberation Sans;
    swt-tab-renderer: null;
    swt-tab-height: 22px;
    swt-selected-tabs-background: #FFFFFF #ECE9D8 100%;
    swt-simple: false;
    swt-mru-visible: false;
  }