ThemeChanger 0.5

Well, i got some things about the current version that i wanna say

i dont like the auto restart of the finder
i dont like how there is no deselect all or select all button
i dont like how the interface is really simple and...oh wait..i do like that

and how it works..i like that

but the first two are real

I'd love to beta test it.

Well the final is out now. Changes:

• Now searches for Themes in Library in all domains (~, /, /Network, /System), in correct order. Of course, you shouldn't put stuff in /System/Library/Themes, and probably won't put stuff in /Network/Library/Themes, but it looks there anyway :-)
• Ignores themes with names starting "." - these are generally broken Duality internal things.
• Automatic Aqua back-up.
• Switching code factored out to a tool. A side-effect of this is that previewing is much more robust since we now know when things happen rather than having to take a guess. The app verifies the tool has not been tampered with against a build-time checksum.
• ThemePreview source is now included, and was modified to make sure it's the front process after it's launched (workaround for oddity when launching it from ThemeChangerTool).
• Now authorises using the "system.preferences" right, so no need to keep reauthorising if you're an admin user.
• Enhanced status readout.
• Installs tool to repair theme files if they become corrupted ("tcfix").
• Installs Aqua before switching themes, so there will never be a mix of components from different themes.
• Restarting the Finder is now a user preference.
• Can optionally restart the Dock.

[*]Automatic Aqua back-up.
How does it do that? If I already have my own theme installed will it label that Aqua?
[*]Installs Aqua before switching themes, so there will never be a mix of components from different themes.
Uh, what if I haven't had Aqua on my computer for months? And is this optional? I loved themechanger because I could use it to mix themes. I hope this 'feature' is not gone.
[*]Restarting the Finder is now a user preference.
That's good. If a theme is botched I'd rather test it on a less important program first!
[*]Can optionally restart the Dock.
Good, I guess.

It prompts you to either quit and revert using another app, reinstall Aqua from an "Aqua Restore" theme, or continue. If you continue, it will label your own theme as Aqua.

See above. The thought that people would want an inconsistent mix of different themes didn't even occur to me, so no, it's not optional. I can make it optional if you think that would be useful.

Really, I thought that was the whole point of Themechanger's ability to install parts of themes without the whole enchilada like other themeswitchers. What's the deal with all those little checkboxes in the right window, if not to take parts of themes and leave others? Just to mix theme's with Aqua? Yuk! Definitely make it an option. You can never have too many options. The Aqua backup thing could be expanded into a 'Save Custom Theme' function so once you get the right mix you can save it off and get it back. I'm made a custom theme that's a mix of MMX elements, Brushed windows, AluminiteX widgets and sliders and a bunch of other stuff. There might be other people who can't do decent themes, but can at least play mix and match!!!

Thanks for your input mr tew

Well definitely make it a feature.
I'm sure this feature will make users happy, including me.
I mean, when I install BBX and then revert back to SmoothStripes, several BBX components are still there. e.g. bootx, the browser's resize buttons, the boot panel, etc. It's very frustrating, and I'm sure it is frightening a lot of users.

Oboy...
I tryed to use ThemeChanger 0.5 version today. And it really blew my system to macheaven. After running a theme-switch on my first OS X HD it wouldn�t boot from that disc anymore. It switched automatically to my second HD.I couldn�t even force it to boot on my first HD.
Then I reinstalled OS X on to my first HD and everything was fine again. Then I tryed ThemeChanger again and the same thing happened when I did a reboot. After that I was a bit annoyed over this and I tryed to find reasons why this could happen.

By accident I found in these forums that some users was not happy that themchangers alter the bootX file. So I replaced the bootX file found in coreservices with the original one.
And after that my system booted normally from my first HD.

Am I the only one that have had this problem with themechanger?

Read the Readme. It has instructions on how to fix things if they go awry.

BTW, what theme were you using?

I was using BBX and Simplex 1.5

SimpleX 1.5 is way out of date, you should use the new one here : http://swizcore.com/SS/macOSX.php

Hey Angus_D,

The new ThemeChanger is for words.

Now For the third time it has happened again. I can�t no longer boot from my first HD 1. The computer automatically switches too my second HD. And my trick to switch back some elements does�nt seemed to work this time.

I can�t boot HD 1 into and therefore use tcfix.

Any ideas what to do?!

_

double post!

Email me solitaire

swizcore at swizcore dot com

This is a screenshot of bootoptions on my First HD. It does look strange doesn�t it!
the "classic" screenshot!

I�m absolutely surtein that themechanger have something to do with it!

Well, I see what you mean. If BootX is fuxx0red then you can't even get into single-user mode. As I have said, themes SHOULD NOT REPLACE BOOTX. And here is the reason why. *sigh*

No, the themes do. Startup Disk looks for bootable "System Folders" by looking for BootX (or the System file for Classic). As I have repeatedly stated, themes should not include or replace BootX, because bad things will happen. I only hope people will take more notice of me now.

Whoa! That is mega whack!. Im in the process of compiling your solution. I'll be sending it to you this evening.

how is one to know which themes will do this and which wont?

By looking at the list of components. Of course, if it's a .theme you might not be able to unselect it. I should probably make TC refuse to overwrite BootX.

But please make it an option!

You could make the BootX box unchecked by default, and when the user tries to check it a warning comes up that says overwriting the BootX file could do damage or whatever and make them click "Yes, I Insist".

Also, when I tried to delete my Aqua backup, I got the eternal progress bar, but after I did force it to quit it seemed like it did delete it. Where does it store the Aqua backup anyway? Another thing about the Aqua backup, it doesn't seem to be backiing up the BootX (very important I'd think) or the menu items that several themes change. Is this right? Can you make it do these in the next version? I love how ThemeChanger is going. It's the only one that's consistantly worked for me. Good job!

hey angus.

a little feedback for you.

using the most recent version of themechanger, and watercolor 1.3, when i clicked install, the progress bar progressed pretty well until it got to somewhere towards the very end where it said "killing dock" and it froze. i think it was frozen, i let it sit for about 8 minutes, my system percentage meter was maxed out so i dont know if it was churning on something or not? regardless, i force quittedout, logged out and back in and it works.

any idea why it froze?

Odd. No idea why that happened. /Library/Application Support/ThemeChanger, of course! It backs up items that themes change on the fly. So, if you install a theme that changes BootX, it backs up BootX before installing the theme's one. Of course, this is completley unuseful because if BootX is broken, you can't boot your comp to replace it anyway. You mean Menu Extras? maybe you didn't revert them to the Aqua ones and you ended up with a theme's resources in your back-up? Glad it works for you.

Well it uses a really lame method for killing the Finder and the Dock, because I added it right at the end of working on 0.5 and I was fed up with trying to find a nice way of doing it (it's easy to get the PID of the Finder, not so easy to get the PID of the Dock). It looks like NSFileHandle is a bit broken when reading from pipes, and it keeps on returning immediately rather than waiting until new data is available. This means that ThemeChanger sits there repeatedly reading data of length 0 while the tool isn't doing anything.

Silly me! I was looking for ~/Library/Application Support/ThemeChanger, of course!




Well I see the purpose of the Aqua backup as a way to return to a cohesive look, not just save a broken computer. Let's say I have stock Aqua installed and install a theme with no BootX. My Aqua backup won't have a BootX backup right? Then I install a theme that does have a BootX. Then I revert to Aqua. Won't I be stuck with that second theme's BootX? Or will it back it up when I install the second theme?



Well I have to admit that I am misusing the AquaBackup feature, because I'd never want to go back to Aqua. I am trying to use it to restore my custom theme after I try out other themes. I set up my computer just like I like it and then clear the Aquabackup and install a new theme. The backup then only contains the items that THAT theme replaced, not everything in my 'theme'. I guess I could get your program to do what I want if I find some theme that replaces EVERYTHING so the ThemeChanger would backup everything in my theme, but I guess the deeper question is what exactly IS everything that a theme could/should replace?



Oh yeah, I love it. It's the first themeswitcher that had brought me anything but grief!

It was designed as a way to save a broken computer. Right. TC looks, finds it doesn't have a BootX backup, backs up your current one and installs the theme's BootX. Well if you just install your theme by hand, remove the aqua backup and restart, then click continue, it should be good. Why can't you do that? Since themes just replace arbitrary files, they could theoretically replace anything. For your purposes, you don't really need to know.

Well, I have created an icon for ThemeChanger. I can't stand the default app icon that it comes with. If the creator wishes, I could send him the file. At least it would be a temp...i.e. better than nothing.

Ryan


rclark2@gladstone.uoregon.edu


P.S. I don't have a place to post a screen shot. If anyone who does would like to post a ss here, please feel free to email me as well.

That sounds easy. Thanks! You know I will report back if I have any problems! :-]




Send me the icon! I'll post a shot of it!
.... oh! I see you just did! I like it! Very cool!
Others can get it here!
http://homepage.mac.com/mrtew/Themeicon.icns.zip

angus.

great piece of software here. just switched back to aqua and updated to watercolor 1.4.1 without a hitch.

suggestion for a future revision - when you click the switch button, the meter bar fills, and finishes, and leaves you sitting there wondering whether or not it did what it did or not. a confirmation box saying "theme installed - log out and back in to see changes" or "aqua restored - log out and back in to see changes" would be handy i think.

I'm going to leave TC hanging at 0.5 for a month or so, due to lack of time, but sure, I'll add it to the list

Make the Aqua backup optional!!!!! (or did you already)

Yeah, I get the eternal progress bars quite a bit but it always seems to work fine. If this is fixed in the next revision, I think this will be the perfect theme switcher.

I've noticed that when the progress bars seem stuck...if I just click on a menu item the sheet goes away.

No. I will probably make re-installing aqua between themes optional, though, since some people seem to dislike that. Sounds a bit odd. I would look into it, but as I said, I'm not going to look at it for a bit.

Could you also put a "never ask again" checkbox in the "Install tcfix" dialog? I do not allow anything to install into /usr/bin unless it is from Apple. Therefore I copied tcfix to /usr/local/bin, yet ThemeChanger still asks. I could do it myself and send a patch if you would like.

BTW, I just thought I'd let you know that ThemeChanger has been referenced on the macosx-dev@omnigroup mailing list as a perfect example of by-the-book AuthorizationServices example code. Nice job on that.

I can see why you'd do that, but it's not in your path at single-user boot AFAIK, which means (l)users would have to type /usr/local/bin/tcfix, which is just added hassle. I'm reluctant to put a "never ask again" box, because I really want people to have it installed, and people are (in my experience) reluctant to do things (even for their own good). Yeah, I had noticed seeing as I wrote that mail, and it was the only example in a Cocoa application that I've seen that is open-source.

Couple of items:

I was wondering if TC sets permissions on switched resources correctly. I've noticed permission oddities after changing Themes.

I also wanted to tell you that preference settings for TC 0.5 don't seem to be obeyed all the time. I have unchecked killing the Fiinder and Dock, but on occassion the progress sheet will hang at the end with Killing Finder or Dock until I click on a menu as mentioned above.

Yeah, I never implemented that properly. I got bored of working on 0.5 and just made it work really hackishly. If you look at the source, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Is there any chance that the ability to apply themes that are just in the raw Extras.rsrc format will be added?

Isn't it just as hard as that? (Correct me if I'm wrong)

he means a extras.rcrs file that isn't in a .dlta or .theme or .whatever bundle. i think a problem that would occur would be that you couldnt have more than two of such files, and that you woldnt have a clue what it is. what i do is just open up a .theme file and delete everything, put in the new extras.rcrs, and edit the plist(or am i thinking of .dlta?). then you have a bare extras.rcrs but in a nice named package.

Yeah I ended up doing the same thing to get a theme i'm working on to work in ThemeChanger. In Duality I can just have an Extras.rsrc renamed to something like "mytheme.rsrc" and it shows up in the themes list.

I haven't seen a theme distributed as just an extras.rsrc file. If it is, where do you put the metadata about what versions of the system it works with, what its name should be, its description, its copyright strings, etc?

whatever.

I WANT LOCALIZED THEMES!!!

Got any examples?

wish i had.
max made a localized "smooth stripes" once, but it seemed to too much work to keep it up-to-date.

so... what's the deal with "resource-based switching"? i thought that would take care of the missing pieces (e.g. finder toolbar buttons) on non-english systems.