Greyscale themes for ZLauncher NEEDED

[TWauki]

hi!

has any1 got some themes or could remake some themes for 4bit greyscale (16 greyscales) and sony hires (320x320) plzzzzz=

thx!

[zipslack]

I agree...lack of grayscale themes/compatibility is a MAJOR factor as to why I still use YiShow instead of jumping to ZLauncher. Why can't most launchers do what YiShow and Facer do --- display the theme regardless of the color depth. Both of these launchers will display color themes on my T415, although they are slower than native grayscale themes. Do they posess some dark secret code that the rest of the world can't duplicate?

BTW, don't tell us to use Constructor to change the color depth of the icons -- going to grayscale with this program tends to make ugly unreadable icons 99% of the time.

Anybody know of a program that can "explode" the TBMP resources out of a palm file and save them as normal bitmaps? That way, we could disassemble color themes, change the color scale, and re-assemble a 4-bit theme.

[tanker_bob]

Try this one (http://www.palmspirit.com/phpmalogitheque/description.php3?id=496&cat=30).

[zipslack]

Afraid not....there are a few themes there that are apparently grayscale, but are saved as 64K color themes, even though the one you point out says it has color and grayscale (it doesn't - only color).

Also, with ZLauncher (unlike Facer or YiShow), the themes and backgrounds must be 16-shade grayscale -- anything else won't work. Even the preview function for background images will be distorted and just won't allow you to select them. It seems that with more and more low-end grayscale Clies being sold, it seems that developers and skin-makers would take this into account.

[Festus440]

Anybody know of a program that can "explode" the TBMP resources out of a palm file and save them as normal bitmaps?

Get PRCExplorer:

http://www.freewarepalm.com/utilities/prcexplorer.shtml

You can load a theme and dump all of the bitmaps out in one shot, or one at a time.

[sinon]

In v3.01, some gray models(running on OS4 or higher) can use color themes too. That means T415 can use Honolulu's WinXP 64K theme, for example.

[Festus440]

Sinon,

What if I make a little utility to turn on the grayscale flag in the ThmI resource in an existing theme?

[sinon]

The new change in v3.01 does not require any modifications of the existent themes. So there's no need to write such a utility.

BTW, I'm really looking foward to your iconset maker. Do you plan add multiple color depth icons in it? Since I noticed your screenshots do not contain the selection for icon's color depth. Or did I miss something?

[Festus440]

Those are details I need to work out. If you have some suggestions, please let me know.

[srjeannine]

ZLauncher just sent me a beta utility that allows the Sony SL10 or non-color machines to use the themes. I downloaded it and not I can use all the themes from this forum. I would like to convert to 16 only because I think they would be smaller files. Just e-mail zztechs. com and ask for the beta.

[tanker_bob]

Jeannine,

Is is a separate utility or built-in to the launcher?

[s360clie]

Use The Constructor to convert!!!!!
It works perfectly for me, remember to change all the transparent color in bitmap families to white. This will make the skin become readable again

[srjeannine]

The file must be built in to ZLauncher. I just Hotsynced it and then brought in a _64 skin and opened it in Theme Manager and it works. The file is quite a bit larger than the one that came with ZLauncher.

s360clie - I am not sure how to use Constructor. I downloaded it and opened it up and there is just a menu bar at the top. I will try to read the Help, but I am not very versed yet in all this PDA "stuff!" Any help you can give would be great. In the mean time, I hope that zztechs comes up with something so the files are not so large.

[s360clie]

Editing the THml resource(Just change it to what the original skin does) from the skin using Rsrcedit can also work.
But because of the bitmaps are only stored as 16Bit, so the loading speed is slow

[srjeannine]

Tanker Bob,

The file is ZL301B.zip. I don't know how to make an attachment!
Hope this helps.
Sister

[zipslack]

They've definitely made a step in the right direction with the new built-in grayscale capability....too bad most themes look awful when displayed as grayscale. This is a problem with Facer and YiShow, too, so it's not limited to ZL. The 16-shade issue is still the major part of the problem, I think, since 64K themes on Facer and YiShow are still clean and less-granulated than 64K themes on ZL when displayed on a monochrome device. I'll check out prcexplorer and see what I can do about making some grayscale themes for myself.

BTW, what I mean about the granulation/16-shade problem is this:

If I convert a background to grayscale using a graphics utility (like IrfanView for Windows or XV for Linux), YiShow will show it perfectly, even though my T415 is supposedly only 16-shade grayscale. The same image in ZL has terrible "banding" or "granulation" where it won't display the in-between colors -- just the 16 shades

[s360clie]

Try to really convert the whole skin to 16 Grey(Rebuild It). You'll find that the icons become readable again! PRCExplorer May not be able to do this because Zlauncher's skin will compress the bitmaps. I still think the Constructor is the best tool to convert them

[srjeannine]

I dowmloaded Constructor from Honolulu's site and opened it. Are the directions simple enough for a "non-techy" person to follow? I would like to convert the image, simply because it runs MUCH faster than the 64 (even the ones that will now work in ZLauncher 3.01). Does Constructor just come up as a menu bar? I opened a theme, but it is all in "Greek" to me!

[s360clie]

Just to copy the Bitmaps in the Skin wanted to rebuild to the Base Skin(Like ZLT_AQuawoorDXP_SonyHR_16.PRC) and change the transparent color in the Bitmap families in the Base Skin to white(Mostly it is white, due to my experience)

[srjeannine]

s360clie,
I have opened Constructor, but it is still GREEK!. Do I
1) open both skin A that I want to make gray scale (16) and B that I want to copy theme form

2) Hold the Alt key and "copy" the bitmaps from B and put in A

3) Do I "replace"

4) the transparent color is done once.

You see what I mean. It would be much easier if you would make some nice skins this way and put them on the forum for us poor Clie SL10 users!!!!
Thanks

[s360clie]

yes, exactly. . i'm not good at desgin but i'll try to convert the skins in the forum to greyscale. thx for the support!(i've just converted the honolulu's osx skin)

[Snu]

Arise, ancient topic!

Um... Has anyone posted 4 bit greyscale conversions of ZLauncher skins? The 16 bit versions do draw very slowly on my SL10.

And just to be generally useful — To me it looks like there are a few 16 bit skins which still work reasonably well in greyscale. The standard (Aquawood) theme is by far the fastest, but it’s hard to distinguish the icons. Honolulu’s ZHono and Launcher X themes are clear and reasonably quick. Honolulu’s Polymer looks very good, but it’s a bit too slow. BandiT also has a few skins which are worth a look on greyscale — LordB, and WhiteSpiriT are the clearest, and have an especially good set of icons for the button bars. But my preference leans toward Honolulu’s skins.

[the_iceman]

what size??? 160x160x16colors??????

or 320x320x16colors?

[Snu]

Ooh — Another Seattlite. :)

I’m interested in using 320x320x4 grey bits. But I imagine there are Palm users who would prefer 160x160x4 bit grey schemes.

[the_iceman]

If there is a theme... I've produced which has an interest for you to be converted .... let me know ... and I can try and see how it would come out as 4bit grayscale. You would be a good guinea pig for it :)

if you need to see what themes I've produced... just check out www.zlthemes.com

[Snu]

Cool — I’ll take a look at your schemes this evening. And yes, I’d be glad to help test out any 16 grey version you come up with.

[Snu]

Iceman,

I’ve looked over your schemes for those best suited to greyscale use. I'll start with a couple general notes.

- I suspect that their look on a greyscale display is somewhat different from what you will see from trying "16 greys" on a color device — The greys aren’t really linear with the grey value. (In particular, the difference between grey = 0 and grey = 1 is much less than the difference between grey = 8 and grey = 9.)
- The animation effects were all very slow — For example, on pressing the tab menu, the animation takes a full second before the menu appears. I suspect this comes from the same problem as the slow drawing speed, and will fix itself with a 4 bit palette.

Anyhow, on to the themes... The ones which translate best are, in my opinion:

ZLT_DEMO_LCARS_TLRTab_HR_PG.prc —
I almost didn’t bother to try this, since I’m not a Star Trek fan. But it’s the fastest drawing of the bunch. (With top and bottom bars and the tools panel showing, it takes about 5 seconds to draw the screen. With just the top and bottom bars, it takes 3 seconds. These times are all taken without using a background image) The thin high contrast lines also work well in greyscale. The large size of the button bar icons and the pictures of the Star Trek people don’t look so good to me, but that’s an aesthetic issue rather than a technical one.

ZLT_Translucence_Sony_HR-Plus_D.prc —
This was slow, taking about 8 seconds to draw. The button icons were clear, though some of the tab icons were muddy.

Oval_Gray_DEMO_320x320_Clie_64K.prc —
This was also slow — about 8 seconds to draw. But the icons were clear, if a bit too low contrast. Pretty much anything in the right of the top button bar was hard to read because of the many different shades, there.

ZLT_Brushed_Metal_Gel_Sony_DEMO.prc —
This looked good, but was glacially slow — It took about 20 seconds to draw. The icons were clear but somewhat low on contrast. The shiny bits on the buttons made the icons a bit harder to read.

ZLT_StoneChrome_Sony_DEMO.prc —
Similar to brushed metal gel, this was extremely slow and a bit low contrast, but otherwise good.

There are a bunch of other schemes, such as Black_Hole and Simply_Nice, which are generally good, but have icons which were completely indistinguishable on the greyscale display.

Anyhow — I’d still be glad to test out any 16 gray versions. My own favorite is... um... still ZHono. But of yours, I would pick Translucence. I’ve unhidden my email address on the forum in case you want to send email.

[OOOPPPs]

Umm.. hello, newbie here

Just wondering wat greyscale (160x160) themes can i get for my Peg s300? i tried looking, but theres all these 64k colour ones..

also i tried to download some themes (the 64k ones) and wallpapers (through pg pocket) onto my palmtop, but all i get is 'fatal error - reset' message ne help??:confused: :confused: :confused:

[the_iceman]

SNU....... PM me your email address... what I did ... was convert the latest theme I created (Stone and Chrome) .... into 16color Grayscale. Now....... I will say ... that I haven't done any modifications to any of the coloring ... to give it transparency and whatnot... so it will show 'borders' around some of the images (especially the category tab icons). What I would like to do though... is send you this dry-run ... and see how it 'acts' on your PDA. The File is about 119kb in size ... but hopefully will be fairly fast for you.

PM Me with your email.. and I'll fire it off to you so you can take a quick peek at it ... and see if it would be acceptable to convert with transparency and all that jazz. :)

[the_iceman]

Originally posted by OOOPPPs
Umm.. hello, newbie here

Just wondering wat greyscale (160x160) themes can i get for my Peg s300? i tried looking, but theres all these 64k colour ones..

also i tried to download some themes (the 64k ones) and wallpapers (through pg pocket) onto my palmtop, but all i get is 'fatal error - reset' message ne help??:confused: :confused: :confused:


hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I'm not really all 2 aware of 16color grayscale themes for 160x160 out there for ZLauncher. Not saying there aren't any ... .just don't know of any off the top of my head.

The themes you are trying to install..... are they hires 64k... or are they already the lowres 64k ones?

[OOOPPPs]

they're lowres 64k, but the main problem is tat the pictures i sync (160x160 converted to grey scale in paintshop) show up correctly in PGP, but when i select it in theme manager, they cause the fatal error:( ... i hav the jpeglib and pgpocket installed but... :confused: :confused: :confused:

[the_iceman]

what version of ZL are you running?

[the_iceman]

SNU... I sent you a 16color 320x320 version of the STAR-TREK-LCARS.... Let me know if the contrast is better.

I think this theme should 'fly' on your handheld.... as the compiled version of this theme... is barely above 60k.

Let me know

[the_iceman]

Oh............... One more thing..... this thread really shouldn't be in the LAUNCHERS category ... should be moved to the SKINS&BACKGROUNDS category... might want to ask a moderator to move it for you :)

[the_iceman]

oh.... if there is anyone else .... who has a 320x320 16color grayscale handheld... and would wish to see how this theme works... please let me know.

[Snu]

I just searched my past posts, and noticed that I left an important bit of information out of this one.

Based on Jeff’s test of some 16 gray schemes, it’s clear that using 16 grays makes a scheme much, much faster on a greyscale device. The difference can be up to a 40-fold speedup with more complex schemes.

So if you’re a scheme designer who is wondering if there’s any reason to make a grey version — Yes, there definitely is.