SkinTW! comes with an eight day free trial during which time it is fully functional. After that, the ability to load or merge skins other than the OS skin, or to move skins to VFS, is disabled. The ability to control display depth, change clock and Graffiti button color, or control whether application buttons are shown in full color or two-color mode remains in the free version that you get after expiry of the trial period. Likewise, the crash protection features continue to work, except that to get the benefit of the RAM icon removal on the free version, one has to run SkinTW! after each time one installs a skin.
If you have Fitaly running (trial or registered), you get to use SkinTW! for free. If you install a trial version of Fitaly, then install SkinTW! (in this order) you can get more trial time for SkinTW!, because the trial clock for SkinTW! will only start running once Fitaly expires.
You can register on zlthemes.com to restore all the functions of the full version after trial expiry.
DIA skins on allow you to change the look of your PDA. SkinTW! lets you load and manage these skins on a Zodiac Tapwave. Do not run this on other devices--it will probably crash them.
SkinTW! includes VFS support which lets you move your skins to SD or other media and has support for 16-bit skins. You can register the trial version on zlthemes.com.
There are two sample skins included, Geeky.prc and FlowersB.prc. These skins only affect the graffiti backgrounds, not the statusbars.
Other sources of free skins:
If you are upgrading from a previous version, hotsync SkinTW.prc to your PDA. Then run SkinTW! to take advantage of any bug fixes.
Read all of these instructions very carefully.
Hotsync SkinTW.prc to your PDA. If you have registered SkinTW!, hotsync SkinTW_Registration.pdb to your PDA.
Hotsync your skin to RAM or put in on a flash card in the /PALM/Programs/SkinTW or /PALM/Launcher directory.
SkinTW! needs enough memory to make two extra copies in RAM of the skin being loaded. If it lacks this memory, it may crash.
To deactivate SkinTW!, delete SkinTW!, do a soft reset, and then delete the "ZDIA-Active" file with the Launcher.
The "SD" (or "VFS") button lets you move a skin to VFS. To copy a skin instead of moving it, use the "File" menu.
Tapping the menu button, brings up a menu. In the "File" menu there is a useful function to move all skins from RAM to an SD card or internal drive (VFS is the general name used), to copy (not move) one skin to VFS and to copy the skin from the card to RAM. There is an options menu with many useful preferences. There is a "Merge" menu for combining resources from different skins--see further on down.
Fitaly comes with its own custom skins of which only a few components are modified from the OS skins. You can mix-and-match the components of these skins with components of other skins. Moreover, SkinTW! can be used for free on a Tapwave device on which Fitaly is running, courtesy of Fitaly.
SkinTW! can read skins from an SD card (and other VFS devices) and move them to VFS. Tap on the SD button (if you happen to have another VFS device, you can selected in the preference dialog). Skins are read from the PALM\Launcher, PALM\Programs\SkinT3 and PALM\Programs\AgendaBG directories on all available VFS devices. You can make SkinTW! start up faster if you keep all your skins in PALM\Programs\SkinT3 and/or PALM\Programs\AgendaBG and in the Preferences dialog disable the option to search PALM\Launcher.
It is not recommended that you load SkinTW! itself onto an SD card or other VFS device.
To uninstall SkinTW!, use "Uninstall" in the "Options" menu.
You might like one set of components of one skin and another set of components of another. For instance, you might like the status bar from one skin but want to stick with your OS's built-in Graffiti backgrounds. You can do that with SkinTW! by using the "merge" options. First, use the "Load" button (or just press the five-way navigator) to load the skin you want for most of the components. Then highlight another skin by tapping on its name, and pull down the menu (tap on the "SkinTW!" title bar), go to the "Merge" menu, and choose which components you want to merge in. If you want more precise control, choose the custom merge option.
The "Merge all" option is useful for "partial" skins. These are skins that do not include all components. For instance, some "partial" skins may include only buttons or only Graffiti backgrounds. Normally when a "partial" skin is loaded, the missing components are supplied from the built-in OS skin. But if you load the skin via the "Merge all" option (or in fact via any merge option), the previously active skin's resources are used for the resources missing in the skin loaded.
"It is possible that creating such a hybrid might violate copyright laws. Consult your local law and any license agreements with your skins and software.
The T3 can display in 1-bit (monochrome), 2- and 4-bit (grayscale), 8-bit and 16-bit color. Since skins look different in the different settings, SkinTW! lets you change the current depth setting to look at a skin at a different setting by going to the Options menu.
Using the appropriate menu option, you can also make the current depth setting the default for applications. Some applications override the default, but many do not. Higher bit settings will make applications use more memory, but perhaps will improve quality. And 16-bit display mode is needed to make full use of 16-bit skins. The default depth setting is set back to 8 after a soft reset. There is an option in the Options | Preferences dialog to force the current setting to stick after a soft reset.
There are some third-party utilities that also set screen depth. Some of these may interefere with SkinTW!'s attempt to set the default system depth. (Butterfly is reported to do so in the case of ClieSkinner on the TH-55.) If you are running such a utility, use it rather than SkinTW! for setting system depth or deinstall it.
To improve quality, you can use 16-bit skins. These display correctly in both 8- and 16-bit screen modes, though look best in 16-bit modes. For instance, GeekySkin is a 16-bit skin.
Not all applications support 16-bit display. Those that do not will display the skin in downgraded 8-bit mode, though should still work. In the Preferences, there is a "dithering" option in the preferences to control how the skin gets downgraded. The "auto" option leaves it up to the skin designer. (Currently, all skins are released with dithering enabled.) When dithering is on, 16-bit images displayed in 8- bit mode are more fuzzy but have better color fidelity, while without dithering the images are sharper but the color fidelity suffers. Which is the better choice depends on the skin. You will need to reload the current skin for this option to take effect as it only affects skins at loading time.
Warning: Support for 16-bit skins may result in problems with some backup software because the SkinTW! internal databases have an oversized (>65000 bytes) resource. For instance, Backupman may skip the SkinTW! internal databases when restoring, but seem to work fine otherwise. In general, backup software may ask whether to skip the StatusBarResources database when restoring due to out of memory or other errors--this is because of the oversized resource. Just say "yes" to any skip or delete prompts for this database. SkinTW! will regenerate it next time you load a skin.
Making 16-bit skins requires generating the appropriate 16-bit resources. The only catch is that if you do that, some abmp resources might end up exceeding the 65000 byte limit, and then you will be unable to copy or load the skin. SkinTW! allows a workaround for this limit. An abmp resource may be split into two resources, an abmp resource that is exactly 65000 bytes long and a continuation resource of type 2bmp and the same id. When loading, SkinTW! will simply merge the two binary resources together into a single image.
You can save the currently displayed skin ("File | Save As..."), if copyright law allows this. This will create an extra copy of the skin. You can choose to compact the skin while doing this. Saving the skin also saves the button and clock colors (though not the full vs. two-color setting, which is not stored in a skin). Saving is useful when you have customized the skin via merge and color operations.
Compacting is quite useful in conjunction with special skins that change only a few components.
The SkinTW! skin format uses the Creator ID 'ZDIA' and type 'skin' (type 'actv' for auto-loader use). Moreover, no 'ovly' resource should be present. For copyright and space reasons, it is a good idea to omit resources that are just direct copies of what is in the ROM.
After SkinTW!'s trial expires, SkinTW! enters a feature-reduced "free mode". In "free mode", you cannot load any new skin (except the built-in OS skin) via the friendly interface. However, if you use the Launcher to delete the "ZDIA-Internal" database, then whenever you start SkinTW! or reset your PDA, it will load the first skin with creator id 'ZDIA' and type 'actv' that it finds. This lets you use SkinTW! with one skin at a time. Skin developers should feel free to include an unregistered copy of SkinTW!, including this documentation, with their skins, in order that their skin be loadable.
If you load in a really buggy skin, you could have continual crashes on reset. To fix this, you can try to do a warm reset and then use the launcher to delete the "ZDIA-Internal" skin.
The author can be contacted by email at ap85@georgetown.edu.
There is a Yahoo discussion/support forum.
Version 1.00: Initial release.