New DME ExtTheme and Launchpad available for download and testing
Hi everyone, and Happy New Year!
I was hoping to have this ready for Christmas, but I got the flu and this delayed the completion of everything quite a lot.
RISC OS DME ExtTheme
Anyway, the new DME ExtTheme tool is a utility to manage extended themes, and it is available on the RISC OS Community GitHub PackMan repository for early beta testers. To use it, you need to enable the beta testing repository, and please use a spare Raspberry Pi when testing software that is not yet stable.
As usual for the DME project, all the tools match one-to-one the same features as similar official tools available on macOS, Windows, and Linux KDE, plus something extra. As a result, the tool is quite complex, and the source code has now passed 3,780 lines of C code. So please help me by testing it. Thank you. 🙂
ExtTheme combines all past and present Theme Manager features, supports all their protocols, and is also compatible with, and works with, ROOL ThemeDefs. This means you lose absolutely nothing and gain a lot. Notably, there is finally a single protocol that runs on all RISC OS releases, all the way down to RISC OS 3.10. That said, this early beta release is only for RISC OS 5, but it should work on older RISC OS releases via ROOL’s PlingSystem for now. More native builds will come later.
Once installed, you can use the !Help file or simply, from the command line, type:
*theme help
For more information. There is no GUI for now, sorry.
Some example screenshots can be found here:
How to get the ROCoG PackMan source on your !PackMan?
If you do not have the ROCoG PackMan repository source installed, you can find all the instructions here.
Please remember that this is beta testing quality code, so to play with this new toy you will need the beta testing repository for now.
New RISC OS Desktop Themes for ExtTheme
ExtTheme comes with some standard themes pre-packaged, and I am currently busy packaging more themes for free download. You will be able to find the themes here.
(More are on the way, so a bit of patience please.)
New Beta Release for LaunchPad
LaunchPad is a replacement for the ancient Acorn Apps, and it matches one-to-one all the features you get on the official launchers for macOS, Windows 11, and Linux KDE.
I have also released an update for DME LaunchPad with fixes that some users suggested a while ago. Sorry for the delay. For those who have installed LaunchPad via PackMan, it will be available straight away as an update.
This update, in addition to being a bug-fix release, also uses DuckDuckGo as the default search engine, as Google no longer supports browsers such as NetSurf very well.
Again, Happy New Year, and have fun! 🙂