THEME SAVER ©2004-2006 Alex Carmona


Description:

Theme Saver is my solution to dealing with the many prefs and files
involved in the overall look of the Workbench.

It allows you to easily save all the GUI-related settings and recall
them at once.
It's made up of two scripts, "Save as Preset" and "Save as Default".

Two of my own Themes are provided as examples, including the imagery
they need and then some extras in case you want them.

As I don't find the layout of the Prefs/Preset/Default drawer to be
practical in the long run, I decided to skip it altogether by providing
my own drawers located more logically (I hope) in order to avoid some
of the shortcomings of placing files in the "Default/Common" drawer.
Future versions of Theme Saver may even depend on using the proper
location for the GUI elements, but for now you can put your files
wherever you want and Save/Recall your themes normally, only my own
example themes require these drawers.


Minimum Installation:

Your first options is to copy only the default icon from 
"ThemeSaver/Prefs/Presets/Env-Archive/Sys" to "ENVARC:Sys" and the two
scripts from "ThemeSaver/Prefs/Presets/Themes" to wherever you see fit.
I'd recommend putting them in their own drawer like
"SYS:Prefs/Presets/Themes" because your themes will be saved in the
same drawer where the script is launched from.


Full Installation:

Your second option is to install the full package, which will allow you
to try my themes and give you some well organized way of storing the
imagery, which may come in handy later for your own themes.
In that case, you may either use the provided install script or copy
ThemeSaver/Fonts and ThemeSaver/Prefs to your SYS:Fonts and SYS:Prefs
drawer, then open SYS:Prefs/Presets/Themes to try it out.

SAVE AS PRESET
This script lets you save your current visual theme so that you may
easily restore it at a later time.

The following settings (*) from SYS:Prefs are saved:
Font, GUI, Palette, Pointer, PopupMenu, WBPattern, Workbench.

When double-clicking on "Save As Preset" a requester will ask for the
name you would like for the current theme.

If a theme by that name already exists, you will have the option to
replace it, enter a different name, or cancel.

A folder containing the .prefs files will be created and an icon with
the name you entered will be added in the Prefs/Presets/Themes drawer.

To restore a theme at a later time, simply double-click its icon.
It will load your prefs for the current session only and will be
"forgotten" when you reboot the computer.

To delete a saved theme, delete both the icon and the drawer by the
same name with the .preset extension.
To see the drawer you may need to enable "Show All Files" from the
"Workbench/Window/Show/All Files" menu, or by pressing the
"Right-Amiga" and "+" keys.
 
(*) After considering the various implications I decided not to save
the ScreenMode settings as most people stay with one resolution and it
would cause unforeseen problems when sharing your themes with others.


SAVE AS DEFAULT

To keep your current theme permanently, use the "Save As Default" icon.
It will save all your settings to ENVARC:Sys.


Notes:

The current version does not save the images used by your settings,
which means that if you want to share your themes with others you
have to copy the images as well, like I did to share the two themes
included in this archive.
Likewise, if you move or rename a background or pattern, it won't be
displayed when you reload a previously saved theme.

Since there's no standard for the location of such files, I made one up
hoping it makes enough sense to be used by others but it's up to you.
So for my themes all the graphics are stored in sub-directories of
Prefs/Presets, namely in Backgrounds, Gadgets, and Patterns.
If you store your own there too it should make it easier when you want
to try different patterns, backgrounds, etc.

For the next version I might come up with a practical solution to
automatically export themes with all the imagery, but for now some
manual assembly is required ;-)

It works fine for me but let me know if you find any bug I missed.