<sect1 id="theme-manager">
<sect1info>

<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Lauri</firstname>
<surname>Watts</surname>
</author>

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</authorgroup>

<date>2002-02-16</date>
<releaseinfo>3.00.00</releaseinfo>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>kcontrol</keyword>
<keyword>Themes</keyword>
</keywordset>

</sect1info>

<title>Theme Manager</title>

<para>With this module you can install, view, and even create, &kde;
themes.</para>

<para>This page is divided into two tabs: 
<guilabel>Installer</guilabel>, <guilabel>Contents</guilabel>.</para>

<sect2 id="theme-installer">
<title>Installer</title>

<para>Here you can install, preview and create &kde; themes.  Themes
created this way may not cover all the configurable options that &kde;
has to offer. However, they do cover most options and are a great way
to get started.</para>

<para>On the left, you can see a list of themes that &kde; is aware of.
Selecting one of the names will change the preview image in the middle
of the pane, to give you a small taste of what the theme looks like.
Any information the author has provided about the theme, for example, a
longer or more descriptive name, is displayed in the bottom of the
pane.</para>

<para>Along with the normal &kcontrol; buttons at the bottom, you have
four new ones to the right of the module.  <guibutton>Add...</guibutton>
allows you to add a new theme to the list on the left.  Pressing it will
open a normal &kde; file dialog, where you can browse to the location of
themes you have downloaded or created.</para>

<para>The <guibutton>Save As...</guibutton> button allows you to save an
existing theme with a new name, for example to allow you to easily
modify it without damaging the original.  It is strongly recommended
that you use this if you intend creating themes by hand, you can get
very unexpected results if there are errors in a theme file.</para>

<para><guibutton>Create</guibutton> will create a theme that contains
your current desktop settings.  Themes created this way are fairly
unsophisticated, but they are a very good start to learning to make your
own.</para>

<para>Finally, it's very easy to collect alot of themes that look
rather nice on a website, but aren't to your taste once you've tried
them.  The <guibutton>Remove...</guibutton> will remedy this situation,
removing the theme from the list on the left.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>
<title>Contents</title>

<para>This page works together with the previous one, allowing you to
custom fit a theme to your own needs.</para>

<para>Not all themes contain instructions (or images) for all the
configurable parts of &kde;.  For example, some contain a color scheme,
a desktop wallpaper, and a style for the panel, but they don't have any
icons or Window Decoration instructions.</para>

<para>Another common situation is to find you have finally got your own
icon theme, color scheme or window decoration arrangement <quote>just
so</quote>, and although you'd like to try out a theme, you don't want
to mess up your current installation.</para>

<para>Using this page, you can see immediately what categories of
changes the theme will make, and you can enable or disable its effects
on those categories.</para>

<para>The list under the heading <guilabel>Work on the following
parts</guilabel> will show you a checkbox to the left if the theme is
going to affect that item, and to the right if the theme actually
contains any contents for that category.</para>

<para>You can use the <guibutton>Clear</guibutton> button to clear all
the checkboxes, and the <guibutton>Invert</guibutton> button to check
all the checkboxes that are currently empty, and clear those that were
checked.</para>

<para>For example, the <quote>Eclipse</quote> theme that comes with a
base &kde; installation contains contents for all the configurable
items, and is by default set up to change them all to its own settings.
The <quote>MGBreizh</quote> theme contains contents for everything
except the icons.  The <quote>Technical</quote> theme, which you can
find in the kdeartwork package, contains <emphasis>only</emphasis> the
icons, so if you were to install <quote>MGBreizh</quote>, and then
<quote>Technical</quote>, you would find you still had mostly the
<quote>MGBreizh</quote> theme in place, but with new icons.</para>

<para>Taking this same scenario, what if you really didn't want the
<quote>MGBreizh</quote> theme anymore, and wanted to remove it, and just
use the <quote>Technical</quote> icon theme with a plain desktop?</para>

<para>You have two choices here.  You can check the <guilabel>Uninstall
parts of previous theme</guilabel> box, and then any installed theme
will be entirely removed before the new one is installed.  Or you could
just install the <quote>Default</quote> theme, which really isn't a
theme, it's more of a theme cleaner - it removes all other themes, and
resets all your desktop theme settings to the &kde; default
appearance.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="theme-author">
<title>Section Author</title>

<para>This section was written by Lauri Watts
<email>lauri@kde.org</email>.</para>

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</sect2>

</sect1>
