[Kde-games-devel] Theming support

[Ian Wadham]

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:18 pm, Johann Ollivier Lapeyre wrote:
> Tomasz Boczkowski originally wrote:
> > I think we should provide unified extendable theme format for all games.
> > I consider a compressed folder with extension *.theme or *.tar.gz
> > containing following elements:
> > - themerc ( including information about author, license, installation
> > directory and specyfing optional game data location )
> > - preview.png
> > - license
> > and optionally:
> > - *.desktop file
> > - SVG graphics
> > - sounds / music
>
>  this is exactly what i'm thinking. Only one point: use zip instead tar.gz.
> Don't forget kde4 will be usable on windows, and most  people can open zip
> and not tar.gz.
>
What is the reason for the themerc file here, as opposed to *.desktop, which
could contain all the same info, and whatever else is required by the game?

The idea of *.desktop is that the "Name" item in *.desktop files (i.e. the
name of the theme on menus or dialogs) gets picked up and translated
automatically, via the "scripty" mechanism.  It would be nice if scripty
could add *.theme to its search list, as I have suggested before.

Re compression, tarring, etc. (see other posts), I don't think we truly need
anything super-efficient at this stage.  Theme files do not seem to be very 
large (provided you use Vacuum Defs - and maybe .svgz - in Inkscape).
Widespread use and availability of the packaging/unpackaging method
should be our main concern, IMHO.

All the best, Ian W.