Currently working on updating some of my old skins and creating new ones. Have encountered a few problems, some due to changes in the way some things work, others due to the lack of a theme builder and not knowing my way around everything in the config files or even what I'm looking for and need to change. (Once upon a yesteryear we used to have theme building as part of an appearance tab/applet in the prefs....) (I do have the WS 9.5 Manual but alas it's not very helpful as it refers to the config panel that we no longer have.)
I have config files for all skinnable modules for some of my older themes, but some of them need to be changed. Sadly, I don't remember how I set up the modules under NS3.x/WS2.x, and I don't have the time ATM to set that up (or anything else!) on the WinXP sys so I might work it out from there.
In all the mods that can have text, how do I change the font, size, normal/italic/bold, and colour, and finally the position of the text? How do I remove a given displayed text that I may not want in another theme?
In one mod, the RAM one, I have both a histogram and horizontal bar. How could I a), remove the bar, b) add it to the CPU or NET mod? (This assumes identical bitmaps of course.)
With the NET mod, I currently only have a single Net In part with Histo bitmaps and 'Net In - n bytes text. How could I add a Net Out display, a) doubling up with identical bitmaps below the Net In part, but change the text to 'Net Out....', and b) dividing the existing bitmaps in half, position both In and Out Histos and respective text in the same bitmap side by side, or if not possible, use two split-off halves as separate bitmaps side by side and set the positions?
The real biggy is the (in Shelf/dock) Recycler mod. Previously, it would seem we just had the separate animation .ico files in the theme folder - I found them to be still there and also came across some old screen grabs that showed it (it's easily identifiable as my files are exact, gamma-corrected original Next alphas converted to icons and are quite different and also larger than the default as the overall size is 64 pixels (icon size in shelf is set to 48 but it worked) - and Workshelf did the rest? Now of course it expects a wsTrashAni.png strip, but there seems to be no way of telling WS it's there, and it doesn't work here. I've tried both a strip of the 64 pixel icons and also one using reduced ones, first by cropping the alpha to the edges of the image and then reducing the whole to 48 pixels. (I also intend to do one of the ancient original 'Black Hole' recycler alphas, though those would look far too small reduced to 48 as the images extend right to the edges of the alphas.)
As an aside, after changing to a number of other themes the other day, the default recycler anim no longer works, no matter what I do. Could copying a .wsr file from before that date (I'm reluctant to do a WS restore from backup as other things changed in the theme that I don't really want to do all over again if possible, before I noticed the problem) work and solve this?
Another spot of trouble is the Battery mod. (The Battery is scaled to 70%.) No matter what or how, it just won't accept the background bitmap. Also, even though I haven't touched any colourisation settings, it turned monochrome shortly after activating it.
There are a few other lesser problems that I seem to have with other things in a theme, but I'll try and somehow sort those myself with sheer bloody-mindedly persistent trial and error if I can. As it is, all the above seems a lot anyway, but regrettably I need some serious help to keep progessing with new themes, sorry.