Purpose and installation

The Theme Toolbox was designed to help creators perform common operations on the Theme-O-Matic Core or preloaders as well as perform uncommon theme operations. More specifically, the theme toolbox package will enable you to:

• getting information on your themes: their version and revision numbers, the properties they include;

• update your themes to the latest version,

• transfer a notecard theme to LSD, or make a notecard theme out of an LSD theme;

• remap your themes, meaning the link numbers (used by the themes) will be adjusted if you added or removed prims from your object after your themes were created;

• perform LSD operations: get the list of LSD themes, the amount of available LSD storage, delete an LSD theme, completely reset the LSD storage;

• apply a theme (of course!);

• perform preloader operations: get information about the installed preloaders, preload a theme into a preloader, apply a preloaded theme

• get information about the Theme-O-Matic system and reset it.

The theme toolbox consists in three scripts:

• Map maker is a rather simple script destined to produce a "mapping" notecard used in the process of remapping a theme (see below). It is to be used alone and only in that very specific use;

• Theme toolbox is a script that manages the whole menu system and performs "direct" operations and communicates with the Theme processor for more complex operations;

• Theme processor is specialized into complex operations regarding themes, like reading the headers, decoding, remapping, reencoding a theme notecard or LSD. It is controlled by the Theme toolbox and therefore the pair of scripts Toolbox+processor is to be considered a single utility.

In some aspects, the Theme toolbox and processor scripts play the role of client scripts and therefore must not be used with another client script, but may need to communicate with the T-O-M Core and potentially several installed preloaders.

Installation

To install the theme toolbox inside your object, you must:

• remove any existing client script from your object

• install (drop in the object's inventory) the T-O-M Core and any required preloaders (as many copies of the T-O-M Preloader script as required)

• install the Theme toolbox and Theme processor in your object's inventory.

About menus and buttons

Once installed, you can get access to the Theme toolbox's main menu and several sub-menus by touching the object. Many of these menus display similar-labelled buttons:

• Close Menu will gracefully close the menu (freeing a few resources) - the menu also expires after 30 seconds;

• ⯅ Back ⯅ in a sub-menu will enable you to go back to the main menu or whatever menu you were using previously;

• Help! will say a few words about the operations in the context of the current menu;

• Select theme (renamed as SourceTheme in the Transfers submenu) will open a specific sub-menu listing all the notecard names, allowing you to pick one for the subsequent operations to use. This menu will also feature a button to switch to LSD themes instead of notecards, and another one to manually enter an UUID (caveat).

One convention when labelling the buttons was that operations that cause a permanent change (on the object, the theme, the Theme-O-Matic itself...) are written in UPPERCASE. Also always pay attention to the menu prompt, which often gives information on the current selection (theme name and type, preloader...), as well as the local chat that displays messages when an operation is performed.

Main menu

Here is a description of the remaining buttons on the Main menu.

• APPLY theme: this button will apply the currently selected theme (either a notecard theme or an LSD theme, depending on what was previously selected)

• Theme info: this button gathers information about the currently selected theme and displays it. Specifically, it will tell about the version and revision numbers of the theme, and the properties it contains.

• Transfers: this button opens a sub-menu dedicated to theme transfer and remapping operations, covered in the next section.

• Preloader op.: this button opens a sub-menu dedicated to operations involving preloaders, covered in another section of this site.

• ABORT: this button cancels an operation in progress, if it's possible. This is mainly about applying themes. However, due to changes in the way themes are applied in version 3.0 (synchronously, if possible, with increased speed), this button is likely to be less useful than before.

• RESET TOM: this button completely resets the Theme-O-Matic. This may be required if you are adding or removing preloaders, so that preloaders get reassigned an id from the core.

• TOM info: this button will send a message to the T-O-M Core, asking for its version and revision numbers, its status (idle or currently applying a theme) and the number of active preloaders.