[Dragon T]

new thread:

Ok, before I release these first 2 Themes for beta testing...
I have what appears to me to be a bit of bug. Can anyone help me?
I have saved 2 Themes into one guikit. (They are about 99% complete)
however, some of the graphical elements from one theme are not showing up after being installed by shapeshifter.

These themes are not designed to be stunningly good looking. I'm using them to help me get to know my way around themeing in OSX.
Would anyone be interested in pointing out to me what I'm doing wrong if I send them a copy of my Theme?
Thanks
DT
=)

[Zimphire]

Any SS expert here willing to help him?

[fireside]

some graphics aren't "caught" by shapeshifter, so my advice would be to revert to aqua, log out, log back in, and reapply your theme.

[RydDragyn]

Have you applied the elements to both aqua and graphite variations?

[wibs]

If the elements are the same in both themes, I'm guessing you had one of the themes applied, then went into TP and created a new variant. The graphics looked right, so you just marked them as saved and moved on, without Merging with Installed Elements. I know that happened to me all the time when I was figuring out variants, anyway .

[Dragon T]

Ah! =)
tis a new day...
and after reading your coments, I think I have worked out what I did wrong. =)

fireside:
I tried that... but it didn't work... I now know why =)
(thanks for the help anyway)

RydDragyn: (a fellow Dragon) =)
yes, applied to aqua and graphite and clear.

wibs:
yes, I must admit I still haven't got my head fully around variants yet... (small head) lol
the elements are mostly the same...

I had half built a single theme...
then duplicated it to enable two varieties. (two seperate themes based on the one original)
I then mostly completed one theme... (when along came ThemePark 1.3)
I then created a new blank theme in ThemePark and imported my mostly completed theme.
(not sure why I did it this way... I guess I was trying to avoid corrupting my previous work while playing with a ThemePark version that I wasn't familiar with.)
(I chose 'import' over 'add', because 'import' seems to give me control over what I'm inserting, whereas I really don't understand what 'add' is doing yet.) =/

I then completed the theme in ThemePark 1.3,
then imported the other original theme into the same TP 1.3 theme.

At this point I had one 1.3 theme 'shell' with two themes inside it. (are they variants?)
(one was complete, one wasn't.)

I then copied the missing graphical elements across until they were both complete.
(or so I thought)
For some reason... as I have just noticed...ShapeShifter does not have ThemePark in its exclude list. (I must have turned that off at some time.)
and there in lies my problem.

You were right... I had one of my themes applied.
so all the blank elements were overidden by shapeshifter.

I now have applied aqua... and added ThemePark to Shapeshifters exclude list.
so I have a bunch more elements to copy across. =) =/

� I have another question on 'Merge with Installed Elements':
As I understand it, that means that the elements that are selected in ThemePark, are merged into the installed theme in Shapeshifter?
If I have that right, then it seems a little strange to my thinking...
I would have thought that the elements should be merged from the SS installed theme, into the theme being edited in ThemePark.
Maybe there is a good programming reason why it is that way around...
or maybe I just have that all wrong. lol =)

Thanks
DT

[wibs]

Originally posted by Dragon T:
� I have another question on 'Merge with Installed Elements':
As I understand it, that means that the elements that are selected in ThemePark, are merged into the installed theme in Shapeshifter?

It takes elements that are currently installed (be it Aqua with ShapeShifter disabled, or some SS theme, or whatever) and moves those graphics into whatever theme you're working on. ThemePark caches these graphics on launch, so let's say you have NEOS applied as your theme, you launch ThemePark, then you change your theme to Aluminum Alloy but keep ThemePark open. Then you do a Merge with Installed Elements... it will put the NEOS elements into your theme and completely ignore Aluminum Alloy.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have edited an element manually, then select it and do a Merge with Installed Elements, it's not going to work. First you have to Discard Modified Elements, then do the merge.

The easiest way I've found to do variants is make one as complete as you can, apply it as your theme, then add a new variant and merge that one with installed elements. That way you're guaranteed to have everything from your first variant and you're just modifying parts of it, rather than trying to copy and paste into two variants at the same time as you build them.

Hope this helps

[smeger]

Looks like this has pretty much been put to rest by wibs, but I'll expound on a few things anyway.

The intent of "Merge with Installed Elements" is to insert the operating system's theme elements into your theme for every selected element all all children of the selected elements in your theme. That doesn't make a lot of sense, so here's another real-world example. Let's say you use ShapeShifter to apply Neos and then launch ThemePark and create a new theme and add a single variant to it. Navigate to Themes -> (your theme variant) -> Elements -> Global Elements -> Window Titlebars -> Window Titlebar Caps. Modify the window titlebar caps. Then, navigate to Themes -> (your theme variant) -> Elements -> Global Elements -> Window Titlebars and choose "Merge with Installed Elements". Everything in the Window Titlebars category except for the titlebar caps will be set to use the corresponding graphics from Neos.

When you export your theme to a guiKit file, only the things that you've specifically changed will be exported. So, in the above example, only the Window Titlebar category would actually be exported, so you'd have a tiny guiKit file.

There's more detail about this in ThemePark's built-in help file.

The only problem with Merge With Installed Elements is that if you do it to an entire theme variant, you've told ThemePark that every single graphic in the theme variant has been modified, and when you export, all of those elements will be exported, and you'll get a large guiKit file. So, it's better to Merge With Installed Elements only for the elements that you really want to merge, instead of doing the entire thing.

Okay, moving on to variants.

Theme variants are basically independent themes combined into the same package. You can have one or many theme variants in a theme. As it currently stands, the variants have no content relation - in other words, changing something in one variant doesn't affect anything in another variant.

Last but not least - Add adds an empty theme variant - none of the theme elements are modified. Import adds the contents of an existing theme as a new variant or variants - the content is preserved.

All clear like mud?