Guidelines for Submitting Themes
Note, these recommendations apply not just to themes submitted to this site, but to Rockbox Themes in general.Theme Name
Please don't include the platform name in the theme title. On the Wiki, and in this site all themes are stored according to the devices thay are combatible with, and having "Nano" or "SansaE200" on every theme name on your Nano or E200 is just silly.
File Structure
The currently preferred method of packaging a theme file is .ZIP.
This zip file should be names to match your theme. If you are dealing with a theme that is for multiple platforms, or are converting an existing theme to a new platform, then including the platform name in the zip filename is fine. Once submitted to this site, that portion of the filename will almost always be removed before uploading.
Inside your zip file should be a folder called .rockbox, and inside this folder 'backdrops', 'fonts', 'themes', 'icons' & wps folders as appropriate- all lowercase.
Case is important... If you don't exactly match filenames etc on unix based platforms - when running a sim for example - the theme will fail to load.
If you created the zip file in a Windows based PC, check inside the backdrops and wps folders for 'thumbs.db' files - these can be deleted as they serve no use to anyone else, and just take up disk space on the device (sometimes several hunderds of kilobytes!)
File Naming
Remember, not everyone will want to load the whole of your theme, they must like to 'mix and match' with a wps from one theme, a backdrop from another etc., so please try to name your backgrounds, wps's and themes consistently.
For example
#My sample theme - mymates.cfg
wps: /.rockbox/wps/marksmates.wps
font: /.rockbox/fonts/snap.fnt
backdrop: /.rockbox/backdrops/johnandstuart.bmp
iconset: silk.18x17x16.bmp
viewers iconset: tango_viewers.20x16x16.bmp
foreground color: 000000
background color: FFFFFF
This would make it difficult for someone to easily know which backdrop is being used by this theme, and makes removing the theme from your device just that little more difficult etc.
Colours and Backdrops
If you load a coloured background on your wps and a coloured backdrop in the menu, you will obviously need to change the forground colour selected in your theme - it would be unreadable otherwise - but you should also set the background colour to a contrasting shade, else when another theme is loaded that assumes the default dark on light colour scheme, the text can become unreadable.Put simply - ALWAYS set both a forground and background color, and ensure that they have sufficient contrast to be readable without your background images being loaded
Problems with this site? Contact me directly sysadmin@rockbox-themes.org
