Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

Self-contained theme files?

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lanfear:
What's the take on implementing self-contained theme files, versus the current "unzipping stuff into all kinds of places"?

I could imagine that storage efficiency (themes share fonts etc.) would've been a good reason back in the days, but not anymore. Or maybe it's something else, I'm curious!

Best regards,

lf

bluebrother:
Storage wasn't a reason for themes anyway -- the space in RAM that's needed to load the theme is what's limited, the only resource we have plenty of is hard disc space. But what's the issue with extracting a zip? It isn't complicated, and supporting self-containing themes would require more complex code.

I did a try for themes based upon tar files but that had a noticeable speed penalty when loading. While I'm still interested in that topic I haven't found the time to look into it again.

AlexP:
Nico_P has recently been looking into using a single tar file for all the image files, which seems to speed up loading of themes due to saving on expensive disk seeks/reads for image heavy WPSs.

lanfear:
Thanks for the replies!

The reason I brought self-contained themes / single file themes up is because of reasons like:

- they don't clutter your system
- they're easier to transport from your system
- they minimize the risk of installation problems

I think that's why most other media software use self-contained themes.

Of course, I don't know how difficult it is to implement, but I just think it would be a nice touch and it would make Rockbox feel like a more mature & streamlined system.

NicolasP:
As BigBambi said, there is a patch that allows loading all bitmaps for a WPS from a single tar file: FS#6571. However I don't think whole themes as a single file is likely to ever happen, as a theme is made of various independent parts (WPS, font, menu backdrop, colours, icons...)

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