Rockbox

  • Status Closed
  • Percent Complete
    100%
  • Task Type Patches
  • Category User Interface
  • Assigned To No-one
  • Operating System All players
  • Severity Low
  • Priority Very Low
  • Reported Version
  • Due in Version Undecided
  • Due Date Undecided
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Attached to Project: Rockbox
Opened by bluebrother - 2006-10-09
Last edited by bluebrother - 2010-06-04

FS#6156 - themes installer (tar themes)

The attached patch works as a viewer plugin for theme files. The theme file will get installed so it can get choosen from the “Browse Themes” menu afterwards. Theme files
the theme gets recognized by the .cfg
the theme will get the same name as the basename of the cfg file inside of the tar file. This has the advantage that the theme name will be preserved, even if the rbt file got renamed (e.g. to distinguish them on the web
paths inside of the file get ignored so you can drop all files into a single dir upon creation. When extracting the correct folders will get created and the files
when extracting the backdrop (if any) will get recognized by its reference in the cfg file, all other bmp files will go to the wps image
the data is tarred and renamed to “rbt”


I want to have single-file themes. Using tar is IMO the best solution as it doesn’t support compression, so no need to handle this (and no possible errors). Using uncompressed zip doesn’t have any real advantages over tar, it is also not suited for
The best way would be to support single-file themes in the rockbox core. I wrote a patch for this some time ago, but this has a noticeable speed penalty. Exploding the themes on the device should be a handy way for users.

I’m also attaching a single-file theme I used for testing for demonstration (h100, converted from rockbox-themes.org). This plugin is similar to  FS#5002  but it doesn’t change the currently set theme but only installs the data.

Closed by  bluebrother
2010-06-04 22:12
Reason for closing:  Out of Date

Nice! I haven’t tried this but form your description, I have two suggestions.

1) Convert the theme installer plugin to be a TAR file viewer, that would be pretty cool - dunno about how you can tie that in with theme installation; maybe you can add tar reading into the plugin libraries and have a theme installer in addition to a tar viewer/extractor. *shrugs* since you already have the code for tar accessing, it’d be cool to see a plugin that would do it to more than just themes.

2) Don’t create your own extension. Yeah, it’s tempting, but I think your work is more likely to be accepted and it’s easier to create files when you use a standard extension rather than this proprietary one (evspecially since you’re using the standard tar format).

1. I’m not sure what purpose to have with a generic tar viewer – as long as it’s not part of the core it won’t be possible accessing files transparently, and having a simple tar extractor is kind of superfluous IMO – you can untar files using a
Reasons for a new extension:

  1. make it easier to distinguish the files (like winamp skins: zip files renamed to .wsz)
  2. make sure it’s a bit harder to open a tar file that is something completely else
  3. we have our own extensions for various text files – wps, fmr, etc., so I don’t see a reason why not to use out own extension for packed themes.
  4. tar doesn’t provide its own extension when archiving, so it doesn’t make a difference if your using “tar -cf foo.rbt” instead of “tar -cf foo.tar”

My goal is to get a packed themes file format which can easily recognized by users and IMO it’s clearer to end-users to use a new file extension.

 

I’m not sure it matters much, but windows programs (such as 7-zip) will name tar archives .tar by default, and they’ll also not be associated with .rbt files (of course, it’s still possible to open a .rbt file with 7-zip, but it’ll be slightly more inconvenient).

I just tried using 7zip on windows. While it suggests the extension .tar when generating a tar file you can simply change this – it’s part of the filename. When providing single-file themes it shouldn’t be necessary for users to open them on the PC. Artists creating such files need to know what they’re doing, but they need to know that anyway.

update diff to reflect latest changes in plugin API.

A tar viewer and extractor would be really nice to have. Do consider it...

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