Theme Management API

Theme Management API

This is an initial attempt at hashing out a secure, reliable Theme Management API. One of the main goals is to modify as little as we can of stock Palm files.

1. Create a new theme folder in /media/internal/.themes/thisTheme/
2. In that new folder, place a file for each image that you intend to theme.

   The new file must be placed in the exact same relative path as before... that is to say, if the file was previously at /usr/palm/images/1.png then the new file must be at /media/internals/.themes/thisTheme/usr/palm/images/1.png

   The new file must have the same name, and be of the same type as the original file.

3. The themer must include a file for each CSS file that he wants to theme...

   If the css file being overridden is an application css, it must be placed in the exact same relative path as it would have been in the application.

   If the original application was /usr/palm/applications/phone/stylesheets/phone.css the theming css must be in /media/internals/.themes/thisTheme//usr/palm/applications/phone/stylesheets/theme.css

   the theming file must ALWAYS be called "theme.css"

4. If you are overriding one of the palm global stylesheets they must be placed in the correct place as well. /usr/palm/framework/stylesheets and be named themeXXXXX.css where XXXXX is the global stylesheet being overridden.
5. In your theme override stylesheets references to your images that override the default images should refer to /var/activetheme/... not to /media/internals/.theme/mytheme
6. When your theme is chosen as the active theme, the system will symlink YOUR theme directory to /var/activetheme.

A one-time patch will be made against the framework files in /user/palm/framework which will add loading themeXXX.css after each reference to XXXXX.css and which will modify launcher so that when an application is loaded, after appname.css is loaded, theme.css will be loaded from /var/activetheme -- matching CSS classes from those files will then automatically override the previous ones from the defaults.

Writing the theming css files

Theming css files must be "sparse" that is, they ONLY contain the classes being overridden not the entire global css file. So, if for example you are overriding the "button_one" class in the phone application css, your theme.css in /thisTheme would be /usr/palm/applications/phone/stylesheets/theme.css and would contain ONE class

{button_one: 
   background-image: /var/activetheme/yadayadayada/1.png
}

NOTE NOTE NOTE -- I know that's wrong -- I'm trying to get an Idea out here ok?