Pierre Mauduit wrote:
Hi,
The skin path just tells RC which skin to use. Within each subdirectory of the themes folder are self-contained themes. They're self contained meaning that they use their own images / layouts.
I personally like how it's done now. I don't see a reason for changing the theming system.
Why not letting people select their theme into the prefs panel ? I already wondered, but forget to ask on the list.
I had thought the forum had someone working on a mod (if not released a mod) for this.
Hi Guys!
I am new on the list and starting with rc now. I liked the abstraction idea from Ralf.
Cheers!
Rodrigo Carvalhaes
But it doesn't serve a purpose. Here's how the theme works:
$config['skin_path'] defines which skin to use. All skins are held
inside the themes/skins (forget what it's exactly called). Inside the
skins folder are sub-folders: one for each theme available for use.
Inside these sub-folders are the HTML files that define the layout and
structure of RC.
This is already abstracted enough that the HTML is out of the code, and a GUI designer never needs to know how any <roundcube> tag gets the information, just how it's returned. Making the skin_path be used with images and such would mean we'd have global images. That's just not how it's set up. I honestly don't know any software that's set up like that.
One thing I could see is putting in some fall-back options. Like if an image isn't found in the theme folder, it uses the default theme's image. Yes, it would totally break some themes fluidity, but at least the images would be there. But once again, that would not help the abstraction of the themes. You would have to include some PHP so that you can "default" to the default theme if images/files aren't there.
But these are just my faults. From working on many projects (PHPSupportTickets, SMF, phpBB) I have to say that I like the way RC does its themes and skins. SMF works in much the same manner, except that it doesn't use an engine to display it; however, it does expect you to have all your images and files in a sub-folder of the themes directory.
~Brett