Update 8/21: New iPod 5G WPS: Applebox.

[fatherfork]

Wow Larry, I'm thrilled to hear that you like my theme so much

You most certainly may upload your modified version, as i think diversity is a great thing; more options = more happiness

About the album art thing, I still use the old system, so it hasn't been a priority, but I'll definitely read into the new way of handling it.

Everything you need to change:

The backdrop: if you use the same one as mine, there's no need to change the name.
The font: same as above.
The theme name: Change "Applebox.cfg" to "Applbox_LarryMod.cfg" or whatever you want.
The wps: Change the folder name and the ".wps" name to your new names.
Inside the theme cfg file; it should look something like this, with only the first line changed if you kept everything but the wps name the same:
wps: /.rockbox/wps/Applebox_LarryMod.wps
font: /.rockbox/fonts/helvB12-L1.fnt
backdrop: /.rockbox/backdrops/applebox_backdrop.bmp
foreground color: 2A2A2A
background color: FFFFFF

Good Luck!

Steven

[lalittle]

Thanks for the instructions Steven.  I'll give that a try, then look into how to post it when I'm finished.

I like the fact that your theme uses a larger font than most the 5G themes do.  The smaller fonts make the themes look really nice on the "gallery" page, but I find them to just be  a bit too small for "normal" use, such as when I'm in the car and want to see things in a quick glance.

Thanks again,

Larry

[fatherfork]

I like the fact that your theme uses a larger font than most the 5G themes do.  The smaller fonts make the themes look really nice on the "gallery" page, but I find them to just be  a bit too small for "normal" use, such as when I'm in the car and want to see things in a quick glance.

Thanks again,

Larry

I completely agree. Larger fonts come under some scrutiny for "not looking as good", but are ultimately easier to see and more practical.

[lalittle]

Stephen -- are the psd files in the zip ("Applebox.psd" and "Top Bar.psd") actually needed for the wps to work, or are they there for "developement" reasons?  I don't see these files in other themes.

Also, is there any way to use image files that have transparent backgrounds?  I tried removing the background from some of the bmp's so I could place them over other parts of the image, but when I save the file as a bmp again, the background becomes white again rather than transparent.  Is there any way of doing this?

Thanks again,

Larry

[fatherfork]

Steven -- are the psd files in the zip ("Applebox.psd" and "Top Bar.psd") actually needed for the wps to work, or are they there for "developement" reasons?  I don't see these files in other themes.

Also, is there any way to use image files that have transparent backgrounds?  I tried removing the background from some of the bmp's so I could place them over other parts of the image, but when I save the file as a bmp again, the background becomes white again rather than transparent.  Is there any way of doing this?

Thanks again,

Larry

The psd files really shouldn't even be there, that was a mistake by me. Oh well, I guess it makes it easier for you

bmp doesn't support actual transparency, so when you delete the background and it's transparent in photoshop or whatever, it won't be in the final file. Therefore, the pink color is used, as rockbox recognizes it as "transparent". if you really want to get rid of the pink, you'll have to crop it down and change the location of the bmp in the wps.

Steven

[lalittle]

Steven,

Thanks for the response.

bmp doesn't support actual transparency, so when you delete the background and it's transparent in photoshop or whatever, it won't be in the final file. Therefore, the pink color is used, as rockbox recognizes it as "transparent". if you really want to get rid of the pink, you'll have to crop it down and change the location of the bmp in the wps.

Forgive me, but I'm not following this.  What "pink color" are you refering to?  What I'm talking about is taking an icon and placing it anywhere on the screen so that only the "black" part of the icon is visible and whatever is behind the icon shows through (i.e. so the icon doesn't have a white box around it if I place it on a "gray" area.)  Are you saying that I could use "pink" for this somehow?  I understand how to change locations of bmps, but I don't understand how to be able to place them anywhere I want without the white background box appearing around them.  Is this possible?

Thanks again for all your help -- I really appreciate it,

Larry

[Yotto]

In Rockbox, "hot pink" or All Red, All Blue, No Green (Aka FF00FF in RGB values) is "transparent".

So if you take this (w=white, b=black, p=pink)

Code: [Select]

wwwww
wbbbw
wbwbw
wbbbw
wwwww

And replace it with this:

Code: [Select]

ppppp
pbbbp
pbpbp
pbbbp
ppppp

It'll look like this on the screen:

Code: [Select]

 bbb
 b b
 bbb

And all that blank part will be whatever's under your bitmap.

[fatherfork]

I'm not really following you either... How about a screenshot so I can get a better idea.

Steven

Wait I think I understand. Try filling all of the picture except the part you want seen(the black part) with 255.0.255 for the color values. This is the pink color I was talking about. Rockbox will see this color as transparent and anything behind it will be visible, instead of the pink.

[lalittle]

So am I correct in assuming that we cannot get a "partially" transparent area of a bmp file?  In other words, it's either completely transparent (255, 0, 255) or not transparent at all, correct?  This would mean that you couldn't use bmps with anti-aliasing since the background would not be "completely" pink in the spots where anti-aliasing had created "semi" pink areas.

Do I understand this correctly, or is there a way to get this to work?

Thanks again,

Larry

[Llorean]

There is no translucency support at all in Rockbox.

[Yotto]

You are correct, each pixel is either totally transparent (color FF00FF) or not transparent at all (not FF00FF).

If you are creative, though, you can fudge it by taking your original background and laying your (really, actually, not pinkified) transparent original image over it, and then using the resulatant image instead of one with any pink in it.  Considering that the thing you are laying down is always covering the same stuff, that shouldn't be an issue unless you are doing something out of the ordinary (like having text there too, but that causes its own problems).

In other words, while you can't do "real" transparency, you can do one of two things (Use pink / prerender) that will both work in different situations and with different effects (both good and bad).