LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

LCARS v4.0 has been released:

http://synthesize.us/LCARS_PADD

If you decide to install, please be sure to read the release notes.

Feedback is welcome.

Changelog:
• Works on ITOS2008 (Maemo 4.0) only
• Built with hildon-theme-tools
• New source file layout
• Most graphics recreated in SVG with Inkscape
• Added black outlines to desktop applets, menus, dialogs, etc.
• Updated desktop applets (with transparency)
• Most icons are now themed properly, rather than diverted
• Unthemeable icons now have their own package (lcars-extras)
• Added startup graphics (lcars-extras)
• New search applet for memory-alpha.org (search-memory-alpha)
• Activated toolbar animations

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Wow, that's awesome. Beeing a Trekkie, I really like this theme. Didn't know that Maemo can can be themed to that extent.

Only problem is, that this theme is making many applications with hardcoded font colour or background colour (partly) unusable.

RSS reader - black font on black background (already mentioned on the website you linked)

Video Center - yellow font on white background.

OMWeather - black font on black background in the detail view.

Skype - yellow font on white background in some places.

Diskusage, Mathjinni... - yellow font on slightly different yellow background in some places.

Just to name some of the more popular applications affected...

Any chance, that you can provide a version of the theme with colours that is also usable with applications where the font or background colour is hardcoded (mostly hardcoded with font = black or background = white).
I guess the LCARS theme with background = light grey or light yellow (maybe the colour currently used for the titlebars or the colour used for the scrollbars) and font = black would also look fine.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

You should also raise bugs against those application authors for ignoring the system-configured colours.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Unfortunately, I honestly don't think there's much I can do to improve those apps with hardcoded colors without seriously compromising the look of the whole theme. You're welcome to make an attempt if you want; colors are defined in the theme's gtkrc file. (/usr/share/themes/lcars-padd/gtk-2.0/gtkrc) Or if you don't feel like digging through that to find what you're looking to change, you could also edit the colors in the theme source image, and rebuild the package.

Instructions for how to modify/rebuild the LCARS themes are here:
http://synthesize.us/LCARS_PADD/HOWT..._hildon_themes

I'll try to submit bug reports to the maintainers of those apps you mentioned, but I'm kind of busy right now and I can't promise I'll get to it right away.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Aside from the colors issue, this is *really* a FANTASTIC job! Thank You!

Anyone for creating an "Auto Destruct" sequence to shutdown or reboot? The whole dialog with confirmation etc. would be pretty cool too! :D

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I am terrible at design, but I would be interested in getting together with someone to add a Nemesis-style blue color scheme. The blue LCARS would match the design of the n810 much better.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Yesterday I did already rebuild the theme according to the instructions on your website. I was just not able to figure out in which file the colour are defined.

I'm already in the process of submitting bug reports. Just wouldn't hold my breath that all or the majority of the authors will fix this in the forseeable future. Maybe the authors of some small opensource applications like OMWeather, but probably not the big ones like Skype.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Thank you for this! I especially like the animated battery icon when charging.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Nice one! Just installed this on my N800 and it's very well done. Congratulations and I'm not even a fan of startrek. In fact I quite dislike the show <ducks>

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I'm also a big fan of the show. However, I am waiting for a fix so that OMWeather details are displayed properly (right now they're black on black).

Also, I've noticed that after I uninstall all the LCARS packages, my key sounds (sounds initiated from hardware button presses) are still LCARS. Anybody know how to restore the original OS2008 sounds? )-: The key sounds are well done, but seriously geeky unless I have the LCARS theme installed/loaded.

EDIT: Touch screen sounds are still LCARS after uninstall too. Ugh?

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Rebooting should return the old sounds. Id did in my case at least.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Follow the website. ;) Uninstall lcars-sounds and lcars-extras, reboot.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Did that. But I still get funky Trekkie keypress sounds. I'll try to reinstall then uninstall again and see what happens.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

You sure you rebooted?

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Yeh. A few times. Once with "reboot" and a couple of times with that tiny depressed button on the top of the device that looks like this:
(|)

:D

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I have to say I'm not a Trekkie but thanks for the theme how-to :)

as for omweather, it's background is transparent and the font colour can be changed in its options.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Huh. Weird. Rebooted again. All is well now. The take-away, I suppose, is ... when in doubt, reboot. When that doesn't work, reboot again. x-: It kinda reminds of how you need to restart MicroB TWICE to get Greasemonkey working properly. And that's actually in the installation instructions.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

True, but as mentioned in a previous post, the detail view (shows when you click on the applet) has a black font.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Oh,sorry, my bad.

As usual, I quickread and assumed :rolleyes:

It's a shame there aren't any more themes for os2008 (i've only seen ones with their size modified & plankton) otherwise problems with themes etc could get more noticed (AFAIK, the built in ones are all same font colour).

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I was able to fix most issues with apps using hardcoded colors by changing two colors in
/usr/share/themes/lcars-bridge/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

First the text colour

color["DefaultTextColor"] = "#CC9900"

this is a bit darker shade of yellow than in the original theme. This way it's readable on both dark and on bright background. -> fixing the yellow on white issues in apps like Skype and Video Center

color["DefaultBackgrdColor"] = "#FFFFFF"

Reverting default background color back to white. -> fixing the black on black issues in apps like OMWeather.

Doesn't have a big impact on the overall appearance of the theme. The only annoying side effect is, that the border around some buttons is still black.

Or another combination that doesn't break the appreance of the theme too much is
color["DefaultTextColor"] = "#CC0000"
color["DefaultBackgrdColor"] = "#F1DF6F"

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Top notch, Ian.

Thanks for updating this. It really shows how dramatically maemo can be themed.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

So I got rid of it but there was still some odd stuff going on like really weird battery charging icons and the sounds. So after a few reboots I got rid of the sounds, and my battery charging icon is almost back to normal, only it's not animated any longer. What to do?? Be careful with this one people..


edit.

not only is it not animated, but the entire icon actually disappears after a while of charging..

edit2. nevermind I flashed my tablet.. it was about time anyways..

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Sorry it didn't work out for you. I'm guessing that if things didn't revert after "a few reboots", you may have actually been doing soft-reboots... (was your power cord plugged in?) You need to unplug the power before "switching off" to actually shutdown the device, otherwise it just goes into charging mode (where Linux is still running, just at a different runlevel). If you see a progress bar during startup, it's a full reboot, and all graphics should be reloaded.

As for the charging animation not being animated anymore, I'm not sure that was caused by LCARS. I've seen this problem appear with Nokia's own graphic in place. I never actually found a fix, but the animation came back on its own a day or so after it broke... Not sure what that's about.


I'm not making any promises, but I've definitely thought about making a mostly blue version (as seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:E...se-E_LCARS.jpg)

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Learn something new everyday :rolleyes:

It doesn't really matter, gave me the perfect excuse for a reflash :D

What I saw was very cool, I had no idea Maemo could be pimped so far, it just wasn't my thing.. ;)

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Incredible job on this theme!! Keep up the good work. It almost seems like it makes my tablet feel "faster" I guess thats the placebo effect in action....

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I installed it, liked it despite not being a trekkie, but removed it because of some shortcomings in the end.

Everything was cool, but the statusbar icons being difficult to read accurately (sound, brightness and battery) and overall goofy colours (if you ask me; I don't know if this is true to Star Trek) made me switch back despite the overall good design of this theme.

It just felt too geared towards appearance over usability. For instance, besides the statusbar, the smaller menu button for only the internet/bookmarks menu makes no sense, but making all three menu buttons smaller so there's more space for running apps would be an actual improvement. I'm not sure if this is possible.

I changed to a different theme, uninstalled lcars-complete, followed by lcars-extras and lcars-sounds. After a single reboot everything was back to normal. However, the theme is still listed in the theme picker. What's going on here?

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Er, it's designed to exactly imitate a fictional computer GUI in a scifi TV show, what in the world did you expect? <_<

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I'm glad so many people like the themes! Of course, you can never please everyone ;)

The clickable area of the internet/bookmarks menu is exactly the same, I just made it appear smaller to make room for the curve. And no, I don't think it would be possible for a theme to change the size of the tasknavigator buttons. On a related note, Nokia actually decided to make the sidebar app buttons a little bigger in OS2008, so that there are now only 3 running apps visible on the sidebar instead of 4. Terrible decision if you ask me.

It sounds like you uninstalled 3 of the 6 packages; you still have the themes and the memory-alpha search applet. Here are the package names:

hildon-theme-lcars-padd
hildon-theme-lcars-bridge
search-memory-alpha

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

This is great, many thanks!!!. I find the font in the gpe calendar a little harder to read now. Is there any way to change that?.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Ever since I was a kid, I loved the LCARS PADD on Star Trek. I even used to make little cardboard facsimiles. I have always a wanted a gadget that did just about everything you wanted, and could be used to monitor important information.

The Nokia N800 was the first gadget to do what I dream of a gadget doing since I was a kid... and now it looks like LCARS PADD too! Thank you ian_ryge for making my childhood fantasy come true.

Now... let us hope Nokia implements universal font colors...

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

This theme is incredible! Thanks a ton! I'm gonna try to make custom icons for every app!

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Very nice!! I didn't get the full effect until I rebooted. I'm terrible @ reading directions.

Top-notch theme.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

That would be awesome! Please release them if you do :)

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

N810 appears to be stuck in a reboot loop :-/

Wonder what I've done wrong.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I guess I underestimated how obsessed Trekkies are with the appearance of their show. I should've remembered all those custom home theatres decked out like Star Trek rooms I see blogged on tech sites.

I just figured that with all the work to go into this, it would be equally concerned with functionality. (How did Captain Kirk read his status bar if its icons looked like that?)

Anway, thanks for the theme again; I may revert back to it for some variety. I think my post sounded more like an observation than a complaint.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Not all of us are blind, apparently. :cool:

Personally, I hate the large menus and icons in OS2008. The more compact design is a plus, IMO.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Sorry to hear that - I hope it wasn't caused by LCARS.

Without more information I can't say for sure what went wrong, but perhaps you uninstalled a theme while it was in use? If you uninstall a theme (not just LCARS, but Plankton and presumably any other theme) without first switching to another theme, you'll be unable to switch themes again until you re-install the currently selected theme. If you reboot with your device in this state, it will enter a reboot loop and you'll have to flash the device. We discovered this nasty bug while making the theme, and put a warning in bold red text on the LCARS page. See maemo bug #2903 for details.

That's one of the reasons I've been telling people to read the release notes when installing, and why the LCARS installer automatically opens the release notes in a new browser window.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

Presumably one could also bypass this by turning off the watchdogs and reinstalling the theme with usbnet/automatic wifi connection and ssh.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

I've uninstalled lcars-complete, and lcars-extas but when i turn off my tablet it still shows the lcars shutdown picture (the same one it shows when you turn the tablet on). I found this werd because removing lcars-extas reverted the the startup screen back to the blue nokia logo. I'v rebooted the tablet sevral times and even created my own custom boot screen, but the shut down still shows lcars. I kept the 3 themes and the sounds package. Any ideas?

[Edit] If i delete the icon-theme.cache file do you think this might help?

[Edit#2] After removing all of the lcars packages and a few dozen reboots the lcars shutdown screen is gone. I guess i need to learn the value of Patience.

Re: LCARS themes for ITOS2008
 

The site/repository is down.

Does anyone know what is wrong and is there a mirror?