bldtheme.py is used to compose Windows Classic graphics. It is intended as a tool for the theme build process, however you can run it manually if you wish (for debugging?).

It takes three parameters: bldtheme.py --scheme=<schemefile> --inputdir=<input directory> --outputdir=<output directory>

<schemefile> is the scheme file that defines constants for the Windows Classic colour scheme

<inputdir> specifies the path to search for images to compose

<outputdir> specifies the path that the composed images will be output

Very simply, this script will:

Import the constants from <schemefile>
Iterate over .png files inside <inputdir>
- Files ending with .src.png will be composed, that is, they will be combined with the relevant colour from the colour scheme, using the corresponding .mask.png file
- Files ending with .static.png will simply be copied to <outputdir> as-is

Notes on the Future

I don't intend this tool to last forever. It exists now so that we can build themes into the GTK2/GTK3 directory structures as they currently work.

In future I intend to have themes work differently. As the user is able to pick custom colours in Windows XP, this process needs to be able to build a theme post-install:

Theme files supporting the build should be installed somewhere like /var/lib/wintc/themes
When selecting the theme, we do a build and output into their home directory (ie. places like ~/.themes) and then select that newly created theme
This will need to be done via our own display.cpl implementation and theme library code
Standard /usr/share/themes will be dropped, themes will have to be selected from display.cpl and not something like xfce4-settings