Rainmeter skin format

[poiru]

I think it'd be awesome if there would be a global format for Rainmeter skins.
A user could just download something like "ABC.xxx" and when that file is opened, it'd add the skins into Rainmeter.

What do you think?

[Inarai]

I think it'd be awesome if there would be a global format for Rainmeter skins.
A user could just download something like "ABC.xxx" and when that file is opened, it'd add the skins into Rainmeter.

What do you think?

Too difficult to implement, completely unneeded, and is COMPLETELY incompatible with the way stuff is developed in Rainmeter.

Regardless of how useful if may or may not be, it's not reasonably doable.

[jsmorley]

If someone wants "paint by the numbers" they are better off with Google Gadgets or Windows Sidebar. If they want a canvas, brushes and a pallet of colors, get Rainmeter.

[poiru]

Too difficult to implement, completely unneeded, and is COMPLETELY incompatible with the way stuff is developed in Rainmeter.

Regardless of how useful if may or may not be, it's not reasonably doable.

I don't think you got what I meant. I was thinking of a archived file (containing all the various INI files and images), that Rainmeter would extract into My Documents/Skins.

[thadarklord]

I think this is a pretty good idea. Correct me if I'm wrong but this would only take 7zip command line utility (which is also used in portable apps.com suite) and a few lines of code in rainmeter or a separate utility. I think this could be done in autohotkey or auto it3 (for now). This would make it easier for noobs and draw even more attention to rainmeter.

[Kaelri]

I agree. Rainmeter's file system is well-suited to this. The best way would be to have the archive contain up to four folders: Skins, Themes, Addons, Plugins. Each of these has a mirror in Rainmeter, so it would just be a matter of copy & paste.

[jsmorley]

It is certainly doable, but never as easy as folks make it out to be. Skins are by default in My Documents\Rainmeter\Skins, but don't have to be there. If the person does a portable install it could be in any directory called \Skins one folder down from Rainmeter.exe. Same with Addons. I do think an "installer" for authors to use when they distribute skins would be a good idea. I will look into this later today. I'm sure I can do something in Autoit that would work well, as a lot of the work and "thinking" about how to handle paths is already in RainThemes.