Okay, that works (For reference, anyone in the future trying to emulate my steps, I had to create the `gtk-3.0` directory in `INSTALL_DIR\share`, then create the settings.ini file) . Its certainly an improvement! Its a little more bloated than gtk2, but not by much. I aligned the tops of the document lists, and set a green line to index them. Its certainly usable.
I dont "quite" like the "cartoon-y" look of it. How everything is gentle, and rounded. Like, instead of checkboxes with actual checks inside of actual boxes, now I get beveled edges and red floodfill for "checked", and white for "unchecked". Also, in the document list on the left, I no longer have lines between documents (except for the active document). The inactive documents just flood and blend together. Unless you hover, then its a "slightly" different shade of grey
Now, this is totally a personal preference! I like the clean crisp feels. I prefer "old fashioned, cold, sharp, ugly" UI's. Some people may prefer the gentler prettier warmer UIs. And you know, thats just preference!!!
I'm not much of a GTK programmer (I've messed with it a tiny bit before). Is it easy/practical to "rip" whatever GTK-2 goodness 1.36 came with, and do this same rethemeing on 1.38, like Prof-Gnome?