LiteSTEP...to 'OTS' or to not...

I thought it was strange that the default skin that came with my install of LS didn't look right.

I went to Indie and all of a sudden the default skin was working properly. Gotta like that.

Well, as you know Jafo, I was a BIG Litestep fan for about 2 years, but with the advent of OTS, and the demise of Litestep.net, I just gave it up and moved on to DesktopX.
I thought the new standard was a pain in the butt, as I had got used to doing things a certain way,(theme switching etc.) and I just couldn't be bothered starting all over again, and anyway, I had been lured away by objects and zoomers and such. I must say though, I DO miss Litestep.net, I used to love trawling through the themes, they were so inspirational to me, and shaped alot of what I do now.
Is LS.net EVER coming back?

IMHO OTS is an excellent structure for Litestep, I've used nothing else since I found it. It needn't be restricting and it certainly improves the odds of a theme working on anyones machine. And it doesn't prevent you from going "rogue" if you want to.

I don't distribute, so I use the Open crae Standard, which means you toss everything in the step.rc.

first of all Jafo OTS does not mean "Official" but "Open Theme Standard".
it is not much more than a guideline for a theme´s directory standard. due to it´s openness a lot of themers like to include new features of the IndieStep build. so of course you have to update your LiteStep and your core modules. the other dev team is more working on resource friendlyness. i desperately hope this code fork comes to an end and LS.net rises again, but it seems like Jalist is the only person who could code a nice PHP site

moshi...it just so happens it was one of yours that gave me a problem...'Audiophile'.....but I added a few others, namely 'Sage' by Phar0e...[he'd included the OTS docs so I wasn't running quite as blind - relying on intuition and a lot of experience....thanks, Phil]....and 10 hours of solid work later, and I've 'almost' got my system ported to OTS....
Just to put it in perspective....I had a trifling 5 simple themes...[one of them was mine running 'clean']...but have now added the 'JafoSTEP Integrated' [as I call it]...which currently stands at 4,401 files, and 378,713,127 bytes....comprising 1 primary theme with 9 different popups and configs, 3 colours, and 13 more interlinked themes...all res independent, all auto loading walls for each res....the simplest has no bmp's, the most complex has 1,605 bmp's....
This, on top of updating from the 20020213 Dev build to the 20020530 Indie build, and converting the Directory structure to OTS.....it ain't a small job....mainly because there are so many limitations if you adhere strictly to the 'method', and I've gotta rig up a lot of work-arounds...
The trick, of course is that I'm running all this stuff from C:\Lite-new\....and not touching my original setup which is just a 'Kill LS - ShellON - Load LS' away....

I'm running it at the moment...[of course]...

/me notes: Jafo lives and thrives on randomly dumping the magnitude of his home brew

jafo: no wonder you had problems with Audiophile. it was done before OTS hitted the scene, so it just can´t be 100% compatible, hehe
it usually mentioned in the theme´s description if a theme is OTS compatible.

moshi....yes, I know, but it had the same [almost] directory structure, one I'd never directly bothered with, that is with the non-core modules in a separate Folder...so I was 'hoping' [silly me] that it would port over to OTS without much ado.
It just became another learning-curve, as was my separate theme....once I got them ticking over, it was a good lead-in to porting the 'biggie'...

yes, it uses the "ceeslans-structure". ceeslans later was one of the OTS "founding fathers", so it is very similar. btw: Audiophile could use a cleanup. it uses a few hacks of chronos.dll (label.dll did not support world time back in the days), so these (chronoc, chronod, ...) could be replaced by label.dll. makes it load faster.
i wonder when the big one will be released. are you planning to upload an iso to an ftp server?

moshi...it'd have to be a CD-distro...
I'm still trying to get around having a popup.rc in the /personal/ and not have it show in certain themes that it doesn't 'suit', eg...my Commodore 64 one...

Just yet another failing of OTS....

Ugh...just thought of a way...another 20 lines of script.rc coding...

Coming in late on this one. Too bad cause its one of my favorite topics.

OTS is a little tricky to convert to, but only in terms of the personal.rc's, etc. The basic directory structure is pretty universal (thats a dangerous term in the Litestep world, I guess).

I definetly have adopted OTS as the standard I use, but with the new indie build theme switcher, you aren't restricted to OTS (which is good). I haven't downloaded many others' themes, but a couple of recent ones I have are by jcg and teschio. I can say that those 3 or 4 themes did drop in practically error free.

So I hope that's a sign of good things to come.

Phil...my theme setup got sort of top-heavy...topping out at 74 rc files....and it all worked perfectly....now I'm chucking in a few more to cope with the 'personal.rc'.....and striking a world of hurt....I get one bit behaving, and another chucks a wobbly.
If it weren't for killing processes....my comp would be a smoking ruin......LiteSTEP goes pear-shaped, sucking up all available ram....I have a gig....and at one stage 'STEP.exe was 756 meg.....2 days now, and I think I need to rework the entire setup.
I still want the full functionality of my system handled with popups and script, but meshed seamlessly with OTS themes as well...

jafo: just comment this line:

include "$PersonalDir$personal.rc"

and use the following:

include "$PersonalDir$hotkey.rc"
include "$PersonalDir$evars.rc"

*Desktop RButton !popup
jdeskmbutton2 [!none;!none;!popup;!none]
jdeskdoubleclicktime 1

now you can define the popup menu in your theme´s step.rc

Ah, moshi...were it so simple...
The trouble is I want to auto config this to be idiot-proof, with no 'commenting' required....so it's a script.rc issue with getting in and out of LSTS.exe...so some can use the personal.rc of joe-average's, and others will ignore it, but re-use it, coming or going...

With the added rc files for the OTS system, I'm still down to 67 rc files....so it's getting 'simpler'....just came up with the idea of a 'includes.rc' file to make it a bit more 'logical'...

https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=13&SkinID=635

Screenshot of my OTS in action.....still got 12 sub-themes to sort out, but I think I 'might' be getting there...

you could use one rc file where you define a value for PopupMenuStyle (or whatever you like it to call). then use conditional statements. you can then change the value for PopupMenuStyle with textedit2.dll.

or if there is only one user (you) that should use the other popup menu it´s much easier. LiteStep has a pre-defined environment variable: $UserName$ that references the user that has logged into the system.
so you could use conditional statements again.

If UserName=Jafo
...
Else
...
EndIf

/me concludes Jafo really really likes gray

all this talk of rc files is putting me in mind of my lovely .vimrc file. people always seem to panic when they see it. its only 30 times bigger than average

moshi....it's dead easy if I just comment out things while switching....but my intent is to make it so that I can upload this 'theme' and anyone at all just pops it in a OTS system and it will work without any editing at all.

My system was fully integrated via popup menu and swapped themes/colours/WB skins from within LS via recycling....not using LSCP.exe as a loader.
Now I have got the primary theme and 9 popups and 3 colours and 4 secondary themes to all work from within OTS...still switching via popup, but with the added linking of LSCP to OTS-compliant themes as well....

So far, I've only totally fragged the shell once....hit lsts.exe by mistake and pickled a few rc files....took a while to get the shell cleaned up again....

Of course, I have yet to switch over to png from bmp....but that's easy enough....

Speaking of .png, oh mighty 'Steppian Hierophants, how different does LiteStep handle those? Does it use .png's internal alpha channel for real, 256-level transparency or is it still plain old don't-draw-ff00ff and only different file-extensions?

Crae.....not sure...I think it's handling them properly...