Theme configuration options

[Kevin Koltzau]

I'm not very familiar with how the winelook is handled in code, what does it 
do exactly? if it simply affects system metrics & colors that would be easily 
merged with themes, if its more then that (like for example different common 
dialogs) it may be more difficult

Full blown theming in windows uses a combination of .theme files and .msstyles 
files.

.theme files I believe existed before XP and do not use uxtheme.dll. They 
primarilly just define system metrics and colors (along with icons for things 
like My Computer, etc and mouse cursors).

.msstyles files are the basis of uxtheme.dll, and allow much broader theming 
support as seen in WinXP, as well as defining system metrics & colors (but do 
not define icons & cursors).

The two theme formats are coupled very loosely, they can be used together 
(primarily to enable defining icons & cursors with a graphical theme) or 
seperate. When used together, any metrics & colors defined in the msstyles 
override those defined in the .theme

Alexandre has requested I use the registry keys that windows uses to define 
theme configuration, in which case under XP those keys are located in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes
and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager

The configuration seems to be split between those two locations, with a couple 
options in both. HKCU primarily contains configuration related to XP's 
msstyles method of theming, HKLM looks to primarilly define theming 
with .theme files (although there is some slight crossover between the two).

On Tuesday 07 October 2003 10:45 am, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Steven Edwards wrote:
> > Is there a way we can merge the winelook option in to the themeing
> > support? The work I have been doing to port comdlg32 is kind of stalled
> > because of tweak_winelook being incompleate in this dll. It would be
> > nice if we could plan on moving all of this stuff together post 1.0
>
> Yes, I'd hope we can move the different tweaks to a theme. The tweaking
> should just just go away: we should have one look, and where people don't
> like that, they can run whatever theme they want instead.