Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization

Can someone modify the Clip Zip cabbiev2helv theme?

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HoshinoPareedo:
The time length and number of songs cannot fit on the screen, and if I change the font to 9 I can't see much of anything. Could someone try to do one of these two things?

(1) Instead of "M:SS 0 OF 0,000 M:SS," could it be "M:SS 0/0,000 M:SS"...?
(2) Could the 0 of 0,000 just be removed altogether? I don't really care what number song it is.

[Saint]:
You could very well do so yourself.

It may seem cruel, but I am very much a "teach a man to fish" type, rather than the "give a man a fish" type. I want to make sure that you have "fish" for the years to come, rather than satisfying your immediate "hunger" (gee...I hope that's not too metaphorical :) ).

All the themes on the theme site are user submitted, every theme you see there involved someone thinking "I want this...", learning to do so, and then doing so.

I understand that some people will look at Rockbox and think that any work done thereon needs years of education and masses of degrees, but for the theme engine, this really isn't the case.

In fact, knowledge of any existing programming language won't help you at all here (well...it is /kinda/ LUA-ish in some respects, slightly...but I digress) - except possibly to help with the understanding of code flow and structure - the language used for the themes is unique to Rockbox.

Theme files (.fms, .sbs, .wps, etc.) in Rockbox are nothing more than simple plain text files read by the skin parser in core in the same fashion an English speaker would do so. Top to bottom, left to right. Contained therein are a series of "tags" and identifiers that tell the skin engine how you want it to behave. You can find this outlined in the manual for your device, most of the tags have examples of usage also.

If you were to open your desired theme's files in <text_editor_of_your_choosing> and compare the tags therein with the manual, you should be able to get a grasp of exactly what is happening, and then make the changes to suit your liking (both of which are very trivial changes, by the way).

I will certainly be here to help if you get stuck, or have any questions, but I won't do this for you (nor should anyone else, in my opinion) as I think this is a great opportunity to not only learn something, but come out the end of it with a sense of achievement - and possibly a desire to go further with your new found knowledge.


[Saint]

HoshinoPareedo:
While I welcome the invitation to learn new things, I have looked into the text files and I really have no clue what is going on in them. "%pe" is what I seem to need to edit, but I can't find it in the files.

Also, the photos in the theme folder labeled "backdrop," etc. can be easily swapped, right? Say I wanted to put an Apple logo, or some other image as the background, do I really need to do anything but save the file and replace it in the folder?

Thanks for your help.

[Saint]:
I made the changes you mentioned here.

Just copy the text from the pastebin and replace the existing cabbiev2helv.wps text with it. To activate one of the edited lines, simply remove the "#" from the beginning of the line (# indicates a comment, and is therefore ignored by the parser).

I included a couple of options, and also left the original line for comparison. This gives you a choice between:

 - Alternation between time elapsed/remaining and playlist position
 - Original implementation
 - Playlist position only
 - Time elapsed/remaining only

I hope this serves you well and inspires you to make further modifications.



--- Quote from: HoshinoPareedo on September 04, 2013, 10:21:16 PM ---Also, the photos in the theme folder labeled "backdrop," etc. can be easily swapped, right? Say I wanted to put an Apple logo, or some other image as the background, do I really need to do anything but save the file and replace it in the folder?

--- End quote ---

For the backdrop, you needn't do anything but replace the original image with a new image of your choice . It must be named the same as the original, or, you must also edit the theme file(s) to include the new naming scheme. Backdrops must be the exact dimensions of the device screen, no more, no less, and must be in bitmap (.bmp) format.

This can also be done with any other image(s) in the theme, but remember that the image(s) will not display correctly if they are larger than the viewport(s) that contain it/them.

If you get stuck, go over the manual and/or come back here and prod myself or others. I am happy to help.


[Saint]  <-- some form of theme expert-ish type guy ;)

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