Thanks Rob - I'm enjoying the new features of DVDA3 - I 'll play with Themes tomorrow ...

Peter

I find DVDA3's theme export seldom does what I want. My background is in desktop publishing, and in Ventura Publisher (which our company created), and later in Microsoft Word, style sheets were used to control the formatting of documents. The key idea contained in style sheets -- and which is missing from DVDA themes -- is that formatting is completely separate from content. In DVDA3, if you save a theme, the content gets saved as well as the formatting. If you apply a theme you have saved, you'll get the buttons from the previous project. What good is that??

Therefore, I still edit the XML files. As it happens, I too want to create most of my DVDs with text-only buttons. This change is VERY simple. Go to the themes folder (which you'll find in c:\program files\sony\dvd architect 3.0\themes). Make sure you go to the folder that does not start with an underscore character, not the the _Themes directory.

For the default theme, go to the default20.thm folder. Open the default20.thm in Winzip (if you have Windows configured to read zip files, it may read this directly). Start Notepad, and drop the default.xml file into Notepad. Then, simply change the SHOWIMAGE tag for the ITEM-BUTTON ITEMRECT from true to false as follows:

      <ITEM-BUTTON>

        <ITEMRECT>0.0, 0.0, 0.22, 0.30</ITEMRECT>

        <IMAGE>0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.8</IMAGE>

        <TEXT>0.0, 0.81, 1.0, 1.0</TEXT>

        <SHOWIMAGE>false</SHOWIMAGE>

        <SHOWTEXT>true</SHOWTEXT>

      </ITEM-BUTTON>

You will seeother item buttons. The one you want to change is at the top of the file and is in the LAYOUT section. Save the resulting file and then put it back into the "thm" zip file.

Save the file, fire up DVDA, and enjoy.

In DVDA3, if you save a theme, the content gets saved as well as the formatting.

Only if you save it with the type Positional. Save it as type Grid if you want the button formatting but not the buttons themselves.

Rob

Thanks for all that John

So far I haven't been able to open default20.thm in Winzip. Although I am able to unzip files when I receive them, I don't seem to have a separate program called Winzip.

If I try opening directly in Notepad, I get unformatted jibberish. If I try Wordpad, I still get jibberish, but it's formatted!

And Rob, even if I save a menu with text only buttons as theme (Grid) and apply it to a menu, when I create a submenu there, it still starts as a Text and Image button.

even if I save a menu with text only buttons as theme (Grid) and apply it to a menu, when I create a submenu there, it still starts as a Text and Image button.

That's because Submenus do not inheret the parent menu's theme. Scene selection menus do. Additional pages to the same menu do. But, for reasons I cannot determine, submenus are given the default theme.

So, either a) alter the default theme (in DVDA2 and DVDA3, that's default20.thm); b) re-apply your text-only theme to any submenus you create; or c) go to Insert -> Page insteadof Insert -> Submenu.

Rob

Winzip is a separate utility that you may not have. However, Windows XP can display the contents of zip files. If you temporarily rename the default theme so it has the extension "zip" see if when you click on this renamed file if Windows XP shows the contents. In essence, it treats the zip file as if it were a folder. I think XP is set up this way by default (at leas XP Home is). You can then work on the XML file as I previously described, and then when you are finished, rename the file so it has the extension "thm".

Do all of this while DVDA is NOT running.