I was getting short tempered when wrote that so it probably doesn't make sense to a lot of people...

I have some sub-menus that were created from a music compilation. Each button in the sub is a chapter marker into the compilation (scene selector) . The sub-menu was created with one of the default themes. I then changed the background, changed the size/font/color of the text buttons and the home, next and previous buttons. Now, if I go to save that as a theme, there are 2 options, Positional and Grid.

If I save it as a 'grid' type, and try to apply that theme to the other pages, the format is not like the original. The text buttons change size, the font size changes and the position of the buttons move around. For example, instead of 1 column of 8 text lines/buttons it changes to 2 columns of 4. Because of this, the text is too small to read.

If I save the created theme as a Positional type theme and try to apply it to another page or another sub-menu. All the various pages changes to the new format correctly except that all the text buttons retain the original (saved) text instead of the actual chapter marker name.

In short, trying to use a theme that I created and saved ends up being a cludged up mess when it is used. If I want to try to apply a custom theme, in a consistent way, I must edit each sub-menu page manually.

I thought about taking the positional page and bringing it into word and create each sub-menu page using a mail merge. However, there does not appear to be a way to export the marker names to a text file within DVDA. In trying to find a way around this, does anybody have the file format specs for the .DAR extension?

"I thought about taking the positional page and bringing it into word and create each sub-menu page using a mail merge."

Pp 129 of the manual talks about the themes being XML files. Looking at a few just in Notepad it seems the grid style only uses one of two options (where you get your 2 rows) while the positional style includes the text button names... Or IOW just what your said were your results.

The type of theme is stated in the XML file, but don't know how DVDA would interpret it if you replaced the button section in the grid with that of the positional, removing the section on horiz/vert button arrangement. But it'd only take a few minutes to try.

Another thought would be to try deleting the text for the button in the positional theme's XML, perhaps duplicating portions of the grid type theme. Or could export each sub menu as a theme, and merge portions of the desired vs existing menu XML.

I'd guess it would work altering the positional themes button text, though not sure what the most efficient method would be. I think in that situation I might create a positional theme using button names like "butn1", "butn2" etc. that could more easily be searched/replaced. The only hint I think is if using word, *might* have to select the text and paste into Notepad depending on how it saved to XML.

It would seem the marker info is stored in the .mpg.sfl file associated with the video rather than the DVDA proj file. Looks like a pain to decode the .dar file, & creating the layout wouldn't help. Only other thing I can think of at the moment is looking into repositioning buttons after the layout is created using something like PGCEdit... Don't know which would be the least trouble for you.

good luck

I found a way around the problems.

FWIW, I found that if I go to save the them as a grid type and then click 'Preview', I can futz with the settings until it is close to what it should look like. When that one is saved and then applied to other pages, it is close enough to use. It's certainly not a user friendly or intuitive operation though.

main thing is ya got it -- cool

Thanks DrLumen. That helped me out too.

Seems to me the next version of DVDA needs to have a third option for saving a theme that saves all the positional info but for text content inherits the chapter names of the current scene selection page.