[smeger]

WERD!

Geekspiff is proud to announce the release of ThemePark 1.2b1. This release adds the ability to generate a new theme for use in Panther based on an existing Aqua theme. It will generate all of the new Extras.rsrc GUI elements added in Panther, as well as updating existing ones that have changed. For example, after updating a theme with ThemePark, the new theme automatically uses the new Panther-style tab indicators, but in the same color scheme and general feel as your original Jaguar theme. The new theme will also have all new "mini" widgets that match the larger widgets that were present in your Jaguar theme. The new theme will have its hierarchy of themable elements modified to include the new Panther elements. Finally, if the Jaguar theme uses Desktopper.net's MenuEnhancer to create "supahfunky" menus, these will work properly in the Panther theme.

This release is beta quality. This means that we don't think it will break anything, but it hasn't been tested extensively.

In addition, there are several large caveats:

This release of ThemePark can only update "tpark" files. This means that you cannot directly update a dlta, rsrc, or xscheme theme - you must first create a "tpark" file. This is not as easy as it might sound. To create a tpark file, you must install the theme you wish to draw the resources from, run ThemePark, create a new theme, and merge the theme with the installed theme elements. This process is described in more detail in ThemePark's accompanying documentation.

Here's the gotcha: You need to install the theme to generate the "tpark" file, which means you need to perform this step in Jaguar. Of course, theme designers already have their themes in "tpark" format, so this issue should not affect them.

I plan to remedy this nastiness in the near future.

The other caveat is that this build of ThemePark does not yet update the Finder's theme resources. Most of them have moved from the Finder's Localized.rsrc file to its Finder.rsrc file, so this build of ThemePark cannot even read them, since it expects to see them in the former location.

So, when you update a theme for Panther, ThemePark moves your existing Finder resources to the "Obsolete" category, where they can be fetched and updated by a future ThemePark build.

Obviously, these problems will be fixed. This release is really just intended to work out the kinks in the auto-updating mechanism, so I'd rather do that before finishing off the Finder stuff.

Please submit bugs (or praise) here or via email. Or, feel free to ask questions about why I generated something the way I did. I'm sure I made some mistakes.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Download ThemePark 1.2b2

[NetworkShadow]

Cool! I'm going to try porting all my jag themes now!! I'll let you know if it breaks aqua or anything.

Good work!

edit: you've got docs on how to do Panther theme auto updating? I don't see anything about it in the docs...
Oh well I'm still a themer newbie, so I might just wait for people to update their themes until you get this version fine tuned.

[Lord Sith]

The way I read it is: You get in Jag apply the theme you want to port to Panther, create new theme, save as ThemePark file, take that ThemePark file into Panther, open it and merge with installed elements, export as dlta, apply using Themechanger, or just replace Panther .rsrc with your "mod".

[NetworkShadow]

Originally posted by Lord Sith:
The way I read it is: You get in Jag apply the theme you want to port to Panther, create new theme, save as ThemePark file, take that ThemePark file into Panther, open it and merge with installed elements, export as dlta, apply using Themechanger, or just replace Panther .rsrc with your "mod".

Ya I'm gathering that too... I might not reinstall Jag just for that though. lol I sure am going to put it to use once Jag is no longer needed.

[valdur]

yes...thank you very much for this update...

luckily for me...the only theme i've been using these days is max's smoothstripes gloss...so i just changed a couple things with that..now that there isn't that copy/paste bug in themepark...yes...finally..

once again thanks...

[swiz]

I figured I would post this here so those who venture into using this have an idea of what to expect.

I used it to convert three of my themes to Panther, all goes well except for a few things.

1. When it makes the Panther tabs from the Jag tabs, it appears to be using the top of the themes north tabs for the top of the tabs and the bottom of the themes south tabs for the bottom of the Panther tabs. So if you hadnt themed the south tabs you get half themed and half Aqua tabs for the update. Easily tweakable though for the designers.

2. It resizes the widnow titlebar widgets to the new size Apple requires, this will mean theme devs will need to redo their titlebar widgets, or risk having them look quite squished. Again, no biggie.

*I should mention that it may be easily possible to just alter the original widgets and tabs from the originals because after the update you can find both in the obsolete category.

3. Alot of the mini states will need to be redesigned cause they too look a bit jagged.

4. The biggest oddity I cam across is that when you preview the them from TP's previewer after the update for Panther compatibility, the Cocoa previewer tab pane is fully Aqua style while the Carbon tab pane is fully in the style of whatever your theme is... ? Weird.

5. Bottomline, THANKS smeg, this makes it possible for me to now get my desktop system over to Panther while still being able to work on these little wonders.

[swiz]

The tab pane remaining Aqua style was from some new Panther PPATs which TP doesnt auto update, obviously because they are new, but they could be updated with the same content of the other PPATs since different tab pane color from window backgrounds is not possible now.

And, the formatting of the "10.3.0" tag that TP creates in main.themescript causes ThemeChanger to crash. Changing it to "10.3" allows it to work fine.

Awesome work smeg, with a few days of redoign some elements I should be able to update all my themes for 10.3 within two weeks. woot

[:dragonflypro:]

Originally posted by swiz:
woot

I'll second that 'woot'.

Moving to the remainder of the forum for praise.

[smeger]

Originally posted by NetworkShadow:
you've got docs on how to do Panther theme auto updating? I don't see anything about it in the docs...
Oh well I'm still a themer newbie, so I might just wait for people to update their themes until you get this version fine tuned.

I wasn't super-clear about this. Here's the procedure:

If the theme file you wish to update has the filename extension "tpark", then:

• Open the "tpark" file in ThemePark while running Panther, and using the default Panther Aqua as the installed theme.
• From the "Theme" menu, choose "Update for use with OS X 10.3.x".
• Your theme is now Panther compatible.

If the theme file you wish to update has any other filename extension:

• Boot into Jaguar
• Install your theme using ThemeChanger or Duality or whatever you normally use
• Launch ThemePark
• Create a new ThemePark theme by choosing "New Theme" from the "File" menu.
• Navigate within the new theme so that "Elements" is highlighted.
• From the "Theme" menu, choose "Merge With Installed Elements".
• Save the theme file. The resulting file has the filename extension "tpark"
• Boot into Panther
• Follow the instructions above for files with the "tpark" extension.

In the near future, this will all be do-able in Panther.

[smeger]

Originally posted by swiz:
1. When it makes the Panther tabs from the Jag tabs, it appears to be using the top of the themes north tabs for the top of the tabs and the bottom of the themes south tabs for the bottom of the Panther tabs. So if you hadnt themed the south tabs you get half themed and half Aqua tabs for the update. Easily tweakable though for the designers.

Yep, ThemePark is doing it exactly as you speculated it was. A quick fix for themes that don't customize the south tabs is to copy the north tab, flip it vertically, and paste into the south one.

East/West tabs work the same way.

Oh, and it actually doesn't use the entire north/south tab. It finds the height of the Panther aqua tab and takes half of that from the top of the north and half from the bottom of the south. This way, it skips the transition into the Jaguar tab bar.

There may be a better way to accomplish this. I'm open to suggestions.

2. It resizes the widnow titlebar widgets to the new size Apple requires, this will mean theme devs will need to redo their titlebar widgets, or risk having them look quite squished. Again, no biggie.

Panther uses the metal window widgets for all normally-sized widgets. If these aren't 14x16 pixels, they're spaced oddly in Carbon apps.

I should mention that it may be easily possible to just alter the original widgets and tabs from the originals because after the update you can find both in the obsolete category.

Yep, everything that's no longer used in Panther is moved to Elements -> Global Elements -> Obsolete, so it's still accessible. All moved elements also have "Jaguar" prepended to their names.

[quote][b]3. Alot of the mini states will need to be redesigned cause they too look a bit jagged.[b][quote]

Yep. They're generated to make the theme usable under Panther without being jarring. But lots of them come out looking sorta nasty. Specifically the ones in the Popup Button category. There aren't any larger widgets that I could just resize to form the mini states in that category, so I had to form them from other stuff.

4. The biggest oddity I cam across is that when you preview the them from TP's previewer after the update for Panther compatibility, the Cocoa previewer tab pane is fully Aqua style while the Carbon tab pane is fully in the style of whatever your theme is... ? Weird.

I came across this too, and couldn't figure out what was happening (although I didn't try very hard).

If someone can give me a "copy this image to that image" fix, I'll add it in.

In fact, I didn't look at the new ppats at all, so anyone who'd like to tell me what they do, I'm all for the plan!

I'd love to see:
copy ppat 1000 to ppat 1024
copy ppat 1001 to ppat 1032
etc...

And, the formatting of the "10.3.0" tag that TP creates in main.themescript causes ThemeChanger to crash. Changing it to "10.3" allows it to work fine.

I can change this to "10.3" easily enough, but I'd rather keep it at 10.3.0 so that all version numbers are formatted uniformly.

Colin & Finlay? Any thoughts on this?

[timdorr]

ThemeChanger uses the version number OSX reports to check against the theme version number. Since OSX reports version 10.3, I think you *have* to use 10.3, not 10.3.0 :/

[sH4d0wF4x]

say, where can i get a jaguar-esque theme generated using this?

or, does anyone have a .tpark of the old jaguar theme that i can convert with this? i don't want to reinstall panther to get it.

[bOOzo]

I have begun investigating the new PPATs. It seems that a lot of them are not used at all, or very rarely used. So far, I've only seen these in action:

2125 - Regular background. The only PPAT used in Cocoa apps (very well used though). Also used in Carbon apps.

2126 - Regular background, only seen in USB Overdrive X so far.

2137 - Carbon Toolbar Background (DragThing for example) and also used as BG for the statusbar for Simple Finder Windows. So this should be the same color as the Toolbar Background.

2140 - Sec Group Box Fill, only used in Carbon apps, Photoshop for example.

2141 - Tab Box Opaque Fill. Only used in Carbon.


I will list more if I come across them, I have them all color coded so it's easy to see them if they are used. But so far, this seems to be the only PPATs used.


So Smeger, I suggest that 2125, 2126 and 2137 go into the "Background" category.

If it's possible, you take the color used in the Toolbar Background PXM and use it for 2137.

For 2125 and 2126, you can copy 2107 from a Jaguar theme.


2140 and 2141 should be named something like "Sec Group Box Fill (PPAT 2140)" and "Tab Box Opaque Fill (PPAT 2141)" and should be placed in the same category as the Tab Box and Group Box,s ince they are not used for backgrounds.
And since you don't change these two resources with the 10.3 updater, you wont need to paste any image in them.

[bOOzo]

Just some additional comments on the Panther updater.

All the PXMs in the drawer category are obsolete, except the Drawer Background.
Drawers now use PXM 4660 "Drawer Bevels" and PXM 4650 "Drawer Masks".
That is great because it's extremely much easier to change drawers now. And they look much better unchanged too.

And the Panther Help Button is actually pointing to the Dial button.

The Tab Panes and Jaguar Tabs are not obsolete. They are still used in some apps, such as DragThing.
So the New Tabs should be called Segment Tabs and the old tabs should be in the Global Elements category like they used to.

I'm also not too excited that some elements are categorized into so many sub categories, for example Mini Popup Buttons have three sub categories (Arrowed Buttons, Arrowed Ends and Pulldown Buttons). I think they should all go into the category Mini Popup Buttons
Same thing with for example the Segment Buttons. I don't think they should be categorized into Aqua, Blue and Clear, because 90% of the times, you paste the same three images into all of those categories, so it would be a lot easier to have them all in the same category. So less sub categories, please

Also, the Vertical Segment Tabs are not changed for me.

Btw, where is the Dial Button used?

I don't mean to be a pain for you Smeger, jsut wanted to point this out to you, I'm sure you have already addressed a lot of them. Keep up the good work

That's what I've found so far.

[goMac]

Hey, just read this thread.

OS tags are being depreciated here. Duality knows 10.2 at max. The style of the 10.3 tag doesn't matter in since Duality won't care anyways.

Monolith does the same.

[MorphOSX]

I went through the steps you suggested for moving a theme from 10.2 to 10.3, and where you say how to update the theme for 10.3, you say to select an item from the Themes menu. However, I cannot find the item you mention, "From the "Theme" menu, choose "Update for use with OS X 10.3.x"."

Is this a feature for registered users only? This is the first time I've used this program and normally I don't mess with themes, however I would like to try updating a theme for Panther.

Thanks,
Dave

[Jail]

Originally posted by swiz:
And, the formatting of the "10.3.0" tag that TP creates in main.themescript causes ThemeChanger to crash. Changing it to "10.3" allows it to work fine.

"10.3.0" works fine in the TC v0.6.1
-jail

[MindFad]

Awesome, man. I'd start making themes now if I weren't so damned busy. I'll cough up a $20 and start one day.

[swiz]

Originally posted by Jail:
"10.3.0" works fine in the TC v0.6.1
-jail

VeryCool!

[MorphOSX]

So anyone...swizz, etc....have any idea where the elusive "Update for use with OS X 10.3.x" menu item is? Is it registered-only, or is it not available in b1?

Dave

[smeger]

Originally posted by MorphOSX:
So anyone...swizz, etc....have any idea where the elusive "Update for use with OS X 10.3.x" menu item is? Is it registered-only, or is it not available in b1?

Dave

It's in the Theme menu of ThemePark 1.2b1, which is available only via the link at the top of this page. It sounds like you're using an older version of ThemePark.

[MorphOSX]

Said it was b1, but maybe i got a bad copy. I'll regrab.

Dave

[MorphOSX]

Thanks, swizz! The vers I had was older and didn't have the menu in it!

Thanks!!!

Dave

[MorphOSX]

"Thanks, swizz! The vers I had was older and didn't have the menu in it!"

err, meant smeger, sorry.

Dave

[bOOzo]

Just found out that PPAT 2131 is used as a sheet background in the Screensaver panel.

Smeger, what's your input on my previous posts?

[NetworkShadow]

Smeger did you take a look at this topic? http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=186701

[smeger]

Originally posted by bOOzo:
Just found out that PPAT 2131 is used as a sheet background in the Screensaver panel.

Smeger, what's your input on my previous posts?

Sorry 'bout the delay, I figured coding was more important than responding to posts.

Basically, I'm implementing everything you've said.

Also, the Vertical Segment Tabs are not changed for me.

Btw, where is the Dial Button used?

Do you mean that vertical segment tabs aren't changed to the Jaguarized contents? I didn't know that customizing vertical tabs was common. I'll update 'em if I can force myself back into that horrid code. It burns us!

No clue where the dial button's used.

Oh, and the Help button is a ThemePark bug, which I'll fix. I seem to recall that my brains were leaking out of my ears during that particular stage.

As a quick progress update, I took a break from this for a few days to let some brain cells regenerate. Getting this update out seriously took a lot out of me, it was not-kidding-around hellish. I'm finishing up the Finder stuff right now (generating the new view buttons from the old ones are a pain).

I've got some other stuff going on, so depending on how things go, you'll see a new build either tomorrow or 1.5 weeks from now.

[smeger]

Originally posted by NetworkShadow:
Smeger did you take a look at this topic? http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=186701

Yep, just saw and responded. Thanks for the hedz-up.

[sanity assassin]

Mucho thank you's for TP, and a little belated too. Works like a gem. Hope you're managing to kick back, take in a drink or keg, and watch that skyline.

Cheers.

[smeger]

Okay, I've implemented all of Max's changes except for changing the hierarchy of the segment buttons 'cause it's just too much of a pain in the ass. I've also fixed some bugs that were in the original version (see the Dotted Crap thread) and added a check that makes sure that all pxm# resources have the number of resources they're expected to have. If not, ThemePark will spew some info to the console about 'em.

The new build also populates some of the new ppats with the proper images as Max described above.

Lessee, what else? Fixed a bug that caused a long pause after updating finished. Oh yeah, and Finder stuff is now auto-updated too.

The only other thing I still want to do with this is add dlta importing so people who didn't create the original theme don't need to create a tpark file in Jaguar.

I'll package 'er up and stick it on the server and post back when I've done it.

For the statistic lovers, the current total on the ThemePark 1.2 update is 12, 399 lines of code, consisting of 378,823 characters. Gawddamm....

[smeger]

Through the miracles of modern science, the download link at the top of this thread now leads to ThemePark 1.2b2. Dig it, post problems in this thread.

Here's the change log:

• Finder images are now properly updated and reorganized within an updated theme.
• Added new Login Panel sleep images to Panther conversion.
• Files that are not modified in Panther are no longer exported when exporting a theme.
• No longer shows erroneous contents immediately after updating a theme for Panther.
• Fixed some missing pxm# states when updating themes for Panther.
• Updating themes for Panther now performs a check for missing pxm# states and logs any to Console.
• Several PPAT resources are now updated when updating themes for Panther.
• Fixed a long pause after updating themes for Panther.

[wagmedia]

Originally posted by smeger:
Through the miracles of modern science, the download link at the top of this thread now leads to ThemePark 1.2b2. Dig it, post problems in this thread.

Thanks for updating ThemePark so fast. Now stop shaking from all that caffeine. I seriously don't know how you get this stuff done so fast. It would take me forever....good work.

[MorphOSX]

Same procedure as before to bring a jag theme into panther, then? Start in Jag and work up?

Dave

[smeger]

Originally posted by MorphOSX:
Same procedure as before to bring a jag theme into panther, then? Start in Jag and work up?

Dave

Well, if you already have your theme in a tpark file from last time, you don't need to go back into Jag to do it again. But if you don't back to Jag you go.

[MorphOSX]

Strange things, then, because I used the same .tpark file I had used in b1, and it wouldn't update for Panther properly, kept giving me errors and fits when I tried to use it.

I had to go back to Jag and regenerate the .tpark file in order to make it work. Strange.

Anyway, it works like a charm, and much better than b1. Kudos to you, smeger.

[smeger]

I just found a minor issue in ThemePark 1.2b2 that would cause the Finder back button not to appear after updating a theme to Panther using ThemePark.

You can work around this by navigating to the back button in the updated tpark file and copying and pasting each element.

ThemePark was saving them into Finder.rsrc as TIFF images instead of as PNGs. Copy/Paste will set 'em back to what they should be.

This is fixed for the next release.

[superfula]

Well, I would love nothing more than to be able to port the Jaguar theme to Panther. Couple problems, and they may have been posted here already, but theme-speak isn't my strong point.

1) The finder back/forward buttons are wrong, which I think smeger just posted about above
2) The max/min/close widgets are really small. I'm pretty sure they are the mini-state widgets instead of the full sized ones.
3) The titlebar isn't transparent in the background state. This could be a limitation of Panther, but thought I'd note it

[smeger]

Originally posted by superfula:
Well, I would love nothing more than to be able to port the Jaguar theme to Panther. Couple problems, and they may have been posted here already, but theme-speak isn't my strong point.

1) The finder back/forward buttons are wrong, which I think smeger just posted about above
2) The max/min/close widgets are really small. I'm pretty sure they are the mini-state widgets instead of the full sized ones.
3) The titlebar isn't transparent in the background state. This could be a limitation of Panther, but thought I'd note it

1) Could you be more specific? One of the problems with an earlier ThemePark build was that the Back button didn't get changed at all. If this is the case, copying/pasting each graphic in the Back Button category will fix this. The other, bigger problem is that most theme designers didn't use transparency in their widgets, instead opting to make the Finder toolbar buttons a "cutout" that included the Jaguar Finder toolbar background. Nothin' I can do about this, you'll have to create new widgets with proper masking.

2) The titlebar widgets are resized to the Panther default size. If they aren't, you get wider spacing of the widgets in Carbon apps than in Cocoa ones.

3) This is a Panther limitation. A fix is upcoming.

[superfula]

1) As far as the Finder buttons....they were ok in beta1, but beta2 changes them to the non-metal back/forward buttons....basically the buttons the old finder used in Jag

2) Yeah I was sure I read that they were resized to Panther's default, but I'm talking small. It uses the mini state of the max/min/close buttons

3) Sweet. Thanks

[smeger]

1) ThemePark is generating a new theme based on your Jaguar theme. So if you had themed forward/back buttons in your Jaguar theme, it translates them into Panther-compatible ones. This usually comes out looking sorta funky.

2) Again, the widgets are updated to work with Panther. Panther's widgets are smaller than Jaguar's, so the widgets are resized (not cropped). If your Jaguar widgets were smaller than normal, your Panther widgets will be shrunken accordingly.

More clearerer?

[mrtew]

Originally posted by smeger:
2) Again, the widgets are updated to work with Panther. Panther's widgets are smaller than Jaguar's, so the widgets are resized (not cropped). If your Jaguar widgets were smaller than normal, your Panther widgets will be shrunken accordingly.

No one is ever going to believe that the widgets had to be shrunk THAT small to work in Panther. You should have just cropped them. It's pretty easy for themers to update their own themes by cropping the old widgets to the size of the new ones though. It will give them something to do! Shrinking them is not the answer! Great work on everything else though. Thanks again!

[smeger]

Originally posted by mrtew:
No one is ever going to believe that the widgets had to be shrunk THAT small to work in Panther. You should have just cropped them. It's pretty easy for themers to update their own themes by cropping the old widgets to the size of the new ones though. It will give them something to do! Shrinking them is not the answer! Great work on everything else though. Thanks again!

I can't crop them because some themes use the whole square, some stick there widgets in the top-left corner of the rectangle, some the bottom-right, some center their widgets, etc.

There's no generalized cropping method that will always work.

[MorphOSX]

Smeger, Swizz, et al:

I've been working on a theme of my own, and I can't seem to figure out where the Login window and cocoa application background patterns are stored to alter them to the look of my theme. They change their colors, however, they remain a graphite-ish striped pattern when I wanted to replace them with a solid grey or similar brushed background.

Are these features not addressed by ThemePark yet? Or am I just overlooking a resource in ThemePark?

Thanks,

Dave