Oh hey,

Sorry, it's just I haven't been using the software for a while now. The gnome-art project is apparently not maintained anymore (http://www.miketech.net/gnome-art/) . There's gnome-art NextGen instead (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gnomeartng/).

Anyway, just to check, I installed gnome-splashscreen-manager (version 0.2-12 karmic) and gnome-art (version 0.2-12 karmic).

The problem still occurs. You can reproduce it as follows:

* start gnome-splashscreen-manager (System->Preferences->Splash Screen, or in the shell: gnome-splashscreen-manager)
* you can't do much here, because there are no splash screens currently installed. Exit the program.
* start gnome-art (eg. System->Preferences->Art Manager, or in the shell: gnome-art)
* Go to Art->Other Themes->Splash Screen
* A list of available splash screens will fill up the first time round (it will take a few minutes)
* Choose "Country Splash" - it's nearer the end (yup, it's still there - the same broken splash screen)
* Click "Install"
* You can now verify if the file "~/.gnome2/splash-screens.xml" contains the reference to the chosen theme (See the attached file)
* You can also verity that you have a broken png file called "Splash-CountrySplash.png" in the directory "~/.gnome2/gnome-art/download/splashscreens"
* Now try starting gnome-splashscreen-manager again (see how at the start) - it will silently fail. If you try starting it from terminal, you'll see something like:
---------------------snip
$ gnome-splashscreen-manager 
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:192:in `last_write': Unrecognised image file format (Gdk::PixbufError)
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:192:in `download_pixbuf'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:32:in `open_uri_original_open'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:32:in `open'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:191:in `download_pixbuf'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:199:in `create_thumbnail'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:271:in `get_splash_screens'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:892:in `each'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/xpath.rb:53:in `each'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/element.rb:892:in `each'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/splash_screens.rb:221:in `get_splash_screens'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/ui/main_window.rb:281:in `reload_splash_screens'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/ui/main_window.rb:479:in `initialize'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/gnome_splashscreen_manager.rb:62:in `new'
	from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-splashscreen-manager/gnome_splashscreen_manager.rb:62:in `main'
	from /usr/bin/gnome-splashscreen-manager:25
---------------------snip
* Now remove the offending file: $ rm ~/.gnome2/gnome-art/download/splashscreens/Splash-CountrySplash.png 
* try to start gnome-splashscreen-manager again - should work this time. If ran from terminal, you'll see this:
---------------------snip
$ gnome-splashscreen-manager DELETE /home/michael/.gnome2/gnome-art/download/splashscreens/Splash-CountrySplash.png
---------------------snip


I also noticed that the "Close" button on the "Help->About" window doesn't work neither in gnome-splashscreen-manager nor in gnome-art. The window decoration exit button works, though.

Also, the splash-screen manager doesn't seem to activate the splash screen on ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) at all - I guess it's no longer supported.

So to summarise, apparently, it's a stalled project, no longer supported, still buggy, and will most likely not be fixed. I haven't tried the "Gnome-Art NextGen" yet - maybe i'll give it a try later, but probably not for the splash screen, as I got used to a splash-screen-less startup.

Cheers!
Michael