Notices

I'm running into a problem.

I made a .deb of WhiteApps. I shut down Theme Maker OS X when I was finished.

Later, I decided to fix one or two things in WhiteApps so I went to the N800, chose another theme, uninstalled WhiteApps from the Application Manager and the folder where it was stored, went back to my desktop Theme Makder folder, went into the 'images' folder for WhiteApps to make corrections, opened up Theme Maker, changed the version number to '2', repackaged the WhiteApp.deb, transferred it over to the N800 and the version number is still '1'. The .deb had been unmodified.

I tried this again by opening up Theme Maker first and then making a really obvious change in a .png that I would notice right away (in case the .deb was altered but the version number stayed the same for some reason).

But, again, Theme Maker's repackaging process didn't produce a new, modified version of WhiteApps.deb.

Repackaging didn't do anything except tell me it was successfully repackaged (when the actual .deb is, in fact, completely unaltered).

My goal is to try to figure out:

1. how I can modify and repackage a .deb even if it isn't the last theme I made in Theme Maker (so I can go back and fix some other themes) and,

2. how I can modify and repackage a .deb even if Theme Maker has been shut down after my initial .deb session for that theme.

At this point, the only way I figure I can alter a theme that is not the last theme produced and after I've shut down Theme Maker is to create a 'dummy' theme, with a different name, create a .deb, go to the 'images' folder of the 'dummy' theme and replace everything with the .pngs from my modified WhiteApps 'images' folder and repackage it under the new theme's name.

Hmm, try looking at the file called "settings." It seems to remember the last theme edited and its attributes. I don't know if this would work, but you could try it out (might want to back up your Theme Maker folder just in case):

Close Theme Maker. Edit the "settings" file and rename the title of the current "last edited" theme to the one you want to repackage. Open Theme Maker again and hit repackage. See what happens! (I haven't tried it. Just a theory.)

And....it seems the OSX Theme Maker is different from the regular one.....so I don't know if the settings file is read, or if it's stored somewhere else? Try looking through the config/settings files for similar information.

Byebye for tonight. Hope that helps even a little.

Yeah. I'm thinking this may be a specific OS X problem. I see there's a 'settings' file in the Theme Maker folder but there aren't any 'settings' options.

Well... there *is* the 'Basic Settings' tab and the 'Build Theme' tab but I don't see how resetting them with the same information is going to somehow start the process of repackaging the already-created 'images' folder into the .deb.

When I open the 'settings' file, the altered version number is in there already and there's nothing about sucking the 'images' folder back into a repackaged .deb. The tab menu will only open the 'Media Converter' 'about' box.

Perhaps the Great Kontorri will appear with an answer

Until then, I'll just putz with my icons a bit and make 'em all translucent

I think, correct me if I am wrong, that deb files are checksummed. You can open them in windows using 7zip.

You could extract the deb and remake on the device with PyPackager.

But... I don't *dooooo* Windows.

Sorry. Couldn't resist

Perhaps there's a Mac equivalent of 7zip?

Oh, man. I gotta stop taking those cold pills. I can't afford to be any dopier than I usually am... .

Hehe, I'm more of a Linux person. If you have the command "dpkg", you could do:
dpkg --extract /path/to/deb/file /path/where/I/should/be/extracted.
But if you use dpkg, you won't get the files which set the name of the package etc. You could try renaming the deb to tar and trying to extract that.

Well. I'll have to try that when I get home. There's another Mariner's game on tonight so that should be 2.5 hours of my time wasted again. Might as well do something productive while watching

Intuitively, it seems Theme Maker should be able to handle this.

I wonder if it would be any better if I put Theme Maker on the N800 and then tried to repackage things... . Maybe it would be happier totally within a Linux universe?