Theme Manager Issues

Raspberry Pi running RISC OS 5.21

Has anyone got a fix for the bug in Chris Wraight’s Theme Manager at Little Yellow Moon ?
http://www.lym.iconbar.com/index.htm
Once installed there is no sprite in the Boot Configuration window, just a blank space with the word Themes underneath.
The manager works but each time a new theme is selected the following error pops up;
‘Boot:!Sprites’ not found at 317
I’ve tracked this down to
“SDFS::RISCOSpi.$. ! Boot.Resources.Configure.!ThemeMan. ! RunImage”
and line 317 which is
OSCLI “*IconSprites Boot:!Sprites”

I do not get this error on Iyonix running RISC OS 5.16 or my Risc PC on RISC OS 6 with Vpod.
I’ve noticed that in the list of enhancements for RISC OS 5.21 under Window manager, error reporting relating to *IconSprites has been tightened up which may be the source of the problem…

Whilst tracking that down I found several new themes at
“SDFS::RISCOSpi.$. ! Boot.Resources.!ThemeDefs.Themes”
How is a new user meant to know
(a) That these are there ?
(b) How to access them ?
Are they intended for use with Chris Wraight’s Theme Manager ?

I’ve been sitting on a ‘Raspberry Pi" theme for over a year which I’d like to release through RISCOScode, but not until new users can have a slick experience with it and other themes. It seems to me we are almost at that point with just the issues raised here in the way.

Any help in resolving these issues, appreciated.
With best wishes,
Martin
http://www.RISCOScode.com

As I understand it Chris Wraight’s work is incorporated within, and is superceded by, ROOL’s new Theme Manager. The Themes are in !Boot.Resources.!ThemeDefs and there is a configuration tool in the current !Boot. (I do not recall when the configuration tool was added or whether it was in rc11.) Applications can also have themed sprites, have a look inside !Printers 1.81 for example.

Works a treat here.

If the absence of the the Theme configuration tool the variable Wimp$IconTheme can be set manually, PreDesk is the place for that.

*show Wimp$IconTheme
Wimp$IconTheme : Raspberry.

The Raspberry Pi defaults to that value.

Is there an easy way to convert Chris Wraight themes to ROOL themes?

Is there an easy way to convert Chris Wraight themes to ROOL themes?

Just rename the Icons file to Sprites. I now have the RISC OS 3 set on my Raspberry Pi, looks very nice I have to say.

The ROOL themes have a lot more in them.

I do not recall when the configuration tool was added or whether it was in rc11.

Just installed rc11 from the raspberrypi downloads page – there’s no theme config tool on this one.

You need the latest HardDisc image dated 4th Oct 13 from the downloads section on this site and a later build of ROM to make sure you don’t get a very stripped effect in all the desktop furniture.

Also if you have a version of Chris Wraight’s Themes installed then make sure it is uninstalled or better still start with a clean !Boot but be aware not to move /delete the DOS partition.

I’ve been sitting on a ‘Raspberry Pi" theme for over a year which I’d like to release through RISCOScode

It’s worth pointing out that theme names are an allocated resource – you’ll need to request a non clashing name from the currently defined UserIF names.
There are almost up to date theme notes and a few on the plugin too.

Martin http://www.RISCOScode.com

Which reminds me, I nearly contributed something to RISCOScode but unless I’m missing something obvious there are zero ways to contact you mentioned – no email address, nor feedback forms, not even a phone number. Then I lost interest and walked off.

Just as a warning to anyone who does try renaming Icons to Sprites in the little yellow moon themes… It ends badly. System complains of certain sprites being unavailable at reboot. I had no cursor displayed; no ResourceFS, no Task Manager and things were very broken.
My only way to get the system back to normal was to copy sprites files from a ROOL theme in and then change the theme again to something safer on reboot.

You’ve been warned

P.S. I assume its down to lots of changes under the hood of the theming stuff but I’d love to see the little yellow moon themes become available, they were rather cool, Steel being my fave :)

Just as a warning to anyone who does try renaming Icons to Sprites in the little yellow moon themes… It ends badly. System complains of certain sprites being unavailable at reboot.

Not surprising. Download the steel theme zip file and look at the contents.
Now shift-click on !boot and then open Resources and then shift-click on !ThemeDefs and open Themes, pick a theme Morris will do nicely.
Now look at each sprite file in turn and compare the contents of that lot with the minimal items in Steel.

To build a new theme as a hack version create a new directory called mySteel and copy the contents of Morris into it. Now replace each sprite in each sprite file with an appropriate one from Steel. Full guarantee here that there will never be a missing sprite because you copied all of Morris – of course some bits may still be Morris so you need a bit more sprite editing to finish the set. Naff hacky technique but unlikely to produce strings of errors.

Didn’t someone build a theme creator? or is that “an exercise left to the reader”¹ Themes is not something I’ve ever really thought that much about. This laptop is XP – looks like a boring classic NT4/2000, the other work laptop down at my side is W7 and looks the same² because I like a machine that works to do a job not video entertainment every time I do something.
The wife just muttered about green text on black when I mentioned this.

¹ Always hated that kind of phrase, usually used by people that didn’t actually know enough to describe the process.

² I find that setting the Themes service to “Disabled” improves my user experience.

I generally preferred amber to green.

I generally preferred amber to green.

I always felt the pain from an accidental brush of the rear of the CRT when adjusting the focus was pretty much equal for both. The amber did seem to go soft focus more swiftly though so the regularity of the pain was higher for amber.¹ It does colour your views :-) ²

¹ I found myself a mirror from a disused bathroom and turned the screen to face the mirror and the focus control to face me.

² The pun there occurred to me as I was typing.

I always felt the pain from an accidental brush of the rear of the CRT

When I was much younger, I helped some guys at school one night (boarding school) attempt to repair the telly. A big 21" thing in a wooden cabinet. After one kid nearly electrocuted himself by not understanding the “chassis live” sticker, my contribution was to decide to move that big thick dirty wire out of the way. You know, the one that plugs into the side of the tube. Apparently the fault was faulty insulation as it disintegrated in my hands and, well, I reportedly back flipped clean across one table and landed heavily enough on another to smash it, not to mention kicking the kid opposite so hard in the goolies he damn near changed gender. I remember reaching for the cable, and waking up in sanatorium a fair bit later with muscle aches that took days/weeks/months to get rid of.

Even now I’m somewhat jittery when around the back of a CRT. That event is not something one would want to repeat.

To add to what others have said, the Theme Manager stuff on my website has been superseded by the Theme Setup plugin in recent disc images. I really need to find time to update the website and make that clear, since the two systems are not compatible, and in any case the !Themes stuff is now quite old and needed updating anyway.

I’d recommend removing my Theme Manager from !Boot to ensure no clashes. This can be done as follows:
- Move any theme files you want to keep from inside Boot.Resources.!Themes.Themes
- Then delete or move out of !Boot the following:
1. The ‘Themes’ directory inside !Boot.Choices
2. The !Themes application inside !Boot.Resources
3. The !ThemeMan application inside !Boot.Resources.Configure

As for updating LYM-style themes to work with the new system, that’s certainly possible. When time allows, I’ll look into getting an allocation for the original ‘Steel’ theme and knocking off the rough edges, plus releasing any others I can find that are reasonably complete. Most themes on my website only updated the window furniture, and left the file icons alone.

Either I misunderstand things or I think you meant MOVE any theme… not

Remove any theme files you want to keep from inside Boot.Resources.!Themes.Themes

OK, corrected :)

waking up in sanatorium a fair bit later with muscle aches that took days/weeks/months to get rid of

Aarghh! Oww! Fiddlesticks!¹

¹ The latter gets a lot of use by me, with 6-year-old around who knows the other word but needs to believe that we try not to use it.

Thanks for the various replies. I’ll hang on to the RISCOScode Raspberry Pi theme until the new theme manager is included in the download from the Raspberry Pi website.
Sprow : Pretty much all of the news items on RISCOScode get sent to me via Twitter so I got rid of the email address on the site as no-one used it anymore. However; mhh@shrewsbury.org.uk
I thought you could get it via the ROOL site anyway ?

I thought you could get it via the ROOL site anyway ?

The Data Protection Act forbids access to such data¹ except for certain clearly defined reasons. Using the data to contact a person about how to submit somethng totally unrelated to the original specified use of the data is not one of those reasons.

¹ Unless the personal data has been specifically made available by the person concerned and even then the use is strictly regulated and restricted to the use specified at the time of submission.
Sorry, possibly an overdose of “Mandatory Training” at work…

Steve:

The wife just muttered about green text on black when I mentioned this.

Wow. I would be happy to be in a relationship with somebody that thought of such a thing to say. The closest my mother (I’m a singleton…) gets to colour-nerdiness is windows turning blue, but that’s only because she has this magical ability to make computers exhibit bizarre errors when she uses them. My favourite was an ancient version of Windows that bailed out flashing “display adaptor not found” on the screen. Uh… There’s just so much wrong with that statement! it is like “keyboard missing, press any key to continue”.

Trevor:

Aarghh! Oww! Fiddlesticks!

There’s a woman-in-charge at work who uses the word “crot”, which roughly means “poop” in a manner even more innocuous than “caca” (and, yes, that cheese called crottins means exactly what you might think it means!). She told me she used to have a much more colourful assortment of words, but when her three year old girl said something incredibly obscene, and as little children tend to do, in a public place surrounded by lots of people, she said she barely managed not to throw up. And she vowed from that moment on, her daughter would not be learning those sorts of words from her parents.

Martin: Please be aware that not all of us care for twitter. Unfortunately, I can no longer say I have never even been to twitter, as when this very site was having technical issues a while back, I thought to go to Twitter and read the ROOL tweet-feed which explained that the problem was known about and would be fixed soon. So, there you have it, I have read one tweet in my life – this one: https://twitter.com/risc_os/status/262967482137079808
Besides, even if you don’t get much via email, what kind of site doesn’t provide an email address? That said, it wasn’t difficult to get your email address (etc) from a simple WhoIs on the domain. ;-)

I would be happy to be in a relationship with somebody that thought of such a thing to say.

Likes beer and curry…