ClieSkinner and the ClieSkinner Registration Data are copyright (c) 1995-2004 Alexander R. Pruss. The word "ClieSkinner" below includes the ClieSkinner software proper, the ClieSkinner Registration Data, this documentation file, and Jeff Frankus's graffiti and statusbar "Layered Metals" skins, which are copyright (c) 2004 Jeff Frankus. The Force16 software is freeware under the BSD license.
1. This is a legally binding agreement between you and Alexander Pruss. You agree to this agreement by USING ClieSkinner, where "USING" is defined as copying ClieSkinner or any portion of it into a PDA's storage (of any sort: permanent or not, hard disk or solid state), or executing ClieSkinner or any portion of it, or making or distributing further copies of ClieSkinner. If you disagree, you must destroy all your copies of ClieSkinner, or portions thereof, including, if you have it, the ClieSkinner Registration Data or portions thereof and the Frankus skins.
2. ClieSkinner is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, implied or express, without even any implied MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE warranty. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. It may crash and burn, destroying your data, but Alexander Pruss may not be held responsible for this. You agree that you know this and you agree that you know that a fully backup of all your PDA data should be made before using.
3. You can re-sell or give away your copy of the ClieSkinner Registration Data but only if you delete all of your own copies of ClieSkinner's Registration Data and require the recipient to adhere to this agreement, and only if have never violated this agreement. You may install ClieSkinner and, if and only if you have a legally licensed copy, its Registration Data on one PDA. You may make as many backup copies of ClieSkinner and its Registration Data for your own use as you wish, providing that (a) you ensure that nobody else has access to these copies or portions thereof (thus, you may not place these copies on a network in a way that allows others to access them), and (b) that only one PDA at any given time has ClieSkinner, its Registration Data and/or a portion thereof ACCESSIBLE to it, where a copy of ClieSkinner or its Registration Data is defined as "ACCESSIBLE TO A PDA" providing that it is loaded on any storage, internal, external or networked, that the PDA is hooked up to, in such a way that it is possible to transfer data from that storage device to the internal memory of the PDA. Sale or transfer under any other conditions is prohibited.
4. You are not permitted to use ClieSkinner in an objectively immoral way or in a way that violates copyright or trademark law, whether international or specific to your location. In fact, you are not permitted to use ClieSkinner in a way that violates any law operative at your location. The one exception is with respect to laws limiting freedom of expression within a totalitarian state. For the purposes of this agreement, anti-pornography, copyright and trademark laws do not count as "limiting freedom of expression" and the United States of American does not count as a "totalitarian state".
5. Any attempts to access the additional features of the full version of ClieSkinner without registration after the expiry of the trial period are violations of this agreement. Use of the Jeff Frankus skin counts as an "additional feature of the full version" for the purposes of this agreement. You are free to use the free features of ClieSkinner as long as you wish, of course. Furthermore, this agreement prohibits you from attempting to find, discover or communicate any methods or tools for continuation of use of the additional features of the full version after the expiry of the trial period.
6. As a special permission that may be withdrawn at any time, and that is automatically withdrawn whenever any of the terms of this agreement have been violated, you may distribute unmodified copies of the unregistered shareware version of ClieSkinner to anyone you wish, providing that (a) all copies include in unmodified form ClieSkinner.prc and this ClieSkinner.html file, (b) this license is binding on all recipients, (c) any website on which the data is posted neither contains or links to any methods or tools for continuation of use of the additional features of the full version after the expiry of the trial period, (d) . The special permission for distributing the unregistered shareware version may be withdrawn either by personal communication from Alexander Pruss (by voice, email or writing), or by a general notice posted at www.prussfamily.us/skinner.html. You are responsible for reading any such notices before attempting to distribute.
7. The Registration Data for ClieSkinner contains a complete computer program copyright (c) 1995 Alexander R. Pruss, distributed in source code format. Copying, distribution or re- distribution of this program is absolutely forbidden by this agreement except under the conditions of point 3 as limited by the rest of this agreement.
8. You are not permitted to use ClieSkinner in an objectively immoral way or in a way that violates copyright or trademark law, whether international or specific to your location. In fact, you are not permitted to use ClieSkinner in a way that violates ANY law operative at your location, with the one exception being laws unduly limiting freedom of expression within a totalitarian state. At least for the purposes of this agreement, anti-pornography, copyright and trademark laws do not count as "unduly limiting freedom of expression" and the United States of American does not count as a "totalitarian state".
9. The icon collections include icons for filling out missing icons, designed by "Schtunks" and/or "Kyvlle" and copyrighted by them, included by permission, for which I am grateful. Some of these have been modified by Alexander R. Pruss.
You should make a backup before using this. If you tested a version of NXClieSkinner or ClieSkinner prior to 0.24, please uninstall that version before using this. (I.e., uncheck both boxes in the old version, reset, and delete.)
You can register on palmgear.com.
Graffiti and statusbar skins on UX, NX, NZ and TH-55 model Clie units allow you to change the look of your PDA. ClieSkinner lets you load and manage these skins on these models. (Do not run on other models--it will probably crash them.)
On NR, NX, NZ and TH models, you need skins in NX or NR format. ClieSkinner can read both. On UX models, you need UX-specific skins because the display layout is different. ClieSkinner should work on Japanese models as well.
The full version of ClieSkinner includes VFS support which lets you move your skins on MemoryStick or other media. This saves a lot of memory. The full version also has support for 16-bit skins. The trial version functions just like the full version for seven days, and then becomes a free version with no VFS functions or 16-bit support (a few 16-bit skins may still load, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and future versions may eliminate this). You can register the trial version on palmgear.com.
Hotsync ClieSkinner.prc to your PDA. If you have registered ClieSkinner, hotsync ClieSkinner_Registration.pdb to your PDA.
You can also hotsync the beautiful Jeff Frankus Layered Metals skin. Depending on your model, you can load one or more of the following files:
You will probably want to hotsync an icon collection for ClieSkinner to use to fill out skins that are missing icons, such as NR statusbars used on NX/NZ/TH models or NX/NZ/TH graffiti skins used on NR models. For the NX/NZ/TH, ClieSkinner includes NX-NZ-TH-statusbar-icons.prc which includes statusbar icons originally by "Schtunks" and/or "Kyvlle", modified by Alexander Pruss. (Thank you, Schtunks and Kyvlle!) If you have an NX/NZ/TH model, you should hotsync this to use skins not designed for your precise model. If you have an NR model, ClieSkinner includes additional resources by Alexander Pruss for converting NX/NZ/TH statusbar skins. These are in NR70-graffiti-icons.prc and NR70-statusbar-icons.prc. If you don't like the graffiti resource, you can turn on resource downscaling to load NX/NZ/TH graffiti skins on the NR.
Collections should be stored in RAM. If you use ClieSkinner in "force depth" mode, you should keep ClieSkinner in RAM.
When you first load ClieSkinner, you will not be able to preview the skins. However, you should still load some skins. Exit ClieSkinner and then your PDA will be reset. After that, when you load a skin, it will be visible immediately.
If you have Mobile-Stream's Landscape support installed, you will by default be in landscape support mode. (To turn this mode off, use the Preferences dialog in the Options menu.) In landscape support mode, you can have a different skin in each of the three different orientations, and the skins will change automatically if set up correctly. With landscape-specific skins, this means you can make sure your statusbar and virtual graffiti buttons stay upright as the orientation is changed. The way this works is that any skin you load in a given orientation becomes the skin for that orientation. So, you can first set landscape-right orientation by tapping on the clock button as per Mobile-Stream's instructions, and then LOAD a pair of skins. Then you can set portrait orientation, and LOAD a pair of skins for use in portrait mode. Finally, you can set landscape-left orientation, and LOAD a pair of skins for use there. These skins will then switch automatically as you change orientations. Note that this will use roughly three times as much memory--each of the three skin pairs needs to be stored in RAM. If you only use portrait and landscape-right, say, you can save a bit of memory by not loading a landscape-left skin--then the portrait skin will be used. To delete the skins, uncheck "Graffiti" and "Statusbar" and do the recommended reset.
After you hotsync new skins to your PDA, you should immediately run ClieSkinner. Otherwise, the skin may self-install on your next reset, and you will have a nuisance as this self-installation will not work with ClieSkinner. To get such a skin to de-install, run ClieSkinner, then force a reset, and then run ClieSkinner again.
Occasionally skins will be set be a developer to auto-reset after hotsync'ing to RAM. Because of this, it's better to hotsync skins to a memory stick's PALM/Programs/Skinner or PALM/Launcher directory. If you do do such an auto-reset, there is a chance ClieSkinner will get disabled and you'll have to run ClieSkinner and reset to re-enable it. If you are worried about this reset, you feed the skin to noreset.exe before to strip out the reset bit. Just double click on noreset.exe or run noreset filename.prc at the DOS command prompt. Noreset.exe is a very unintelligent program. Do not use it on anything other than a Palm database as it will corrupt it.
ClieSkinner uses about 150K on the NX60/70 (more on later models, and more if 16-bit support is enabled) to load the currently loaded skins into RAM. Fortunately, you can keep the original copies of the skins on a memory stick or other VFS device. In fact, after you have a loaded a skin, you can even delete it--it will remain on display. You can even delete ClieSkinner, and it will still stay there.To get rid of one or both of ClieSkinner's skinning functions, just uncheck it or them. Upon exiting ClieSkinner, your PDA will reset again. If you unchecked both the graffiti and the statusbar functions, you can then delete ClieSkinner to reclaim all memory. Or if you unchecked one of the two functions, or both but still want to keep the ClieSkinner program for later use, after your reset run ClieSkinner and the memory will be reclaimed.
Tapping the menu button, brings up a menu. There is a separate menu for operating on the currently selected graffiti skin and a separate one for operating on the currently selected statusbar skin. The currently available functions are Rename and Move all to card.
The VFS-enabled version of this can read skins from VFS (memory stick, compact flash, etc.) and move them to VFS. Tap on the MS/CF/Media/VFS button to move the highlighted skin there. Skins are read from the PALM\Launcher and PALM\Programs\Skinner directories on all available VFS devices. You can make ClieSkinner start up faster if you keep all your skins in PALM\Programs\Skinner and in the Preferences dialog disable the option to search PALM\Launcher.
If you have more than VFS device, the Options|Preferences dialog lets you choose which one is used for moving skins to. In any case, all available devices are used for reading skins.
The Move all menu option uses the destination set in the options for VFS operations. Items already on a VFS card, even a different one, will not be moved by Move all. However, they can individually be moved to a different card by setting that card as the destination and then tapping on the MS/CF/Media/VFS button.
It is not recommended that you load ClieSkinner itself onto a MemoryStick or other VFS device.
If you only use one of the two functions (e.g., only statusbar skins or only graffiti skins), you should have the other unchecked to save memory.
Occasionally you may load a statusbar skin that is missing some images. Missing resources may occur in the following cases:
On NR/NX/NZ/TH models, there are several different ways missing statusbar icons can be handled, toggled by going to the menu and choosing "Preferences". The UX ignores the setting and always acts in "from earlier loaded skin" mode.
If you like the collection so much that you want to use it ALL the time, you can choose collection always overrides, in which case icons from the collection are used always.
If an icon can't be found in the collection, it is taken from the last loaded skin that had it. If it wasn't there either, then it becomes an empty square.
There are two other tweaks you can set here for icon substitution. Normally, if icons from the collection are used, they get their backgrounds filled in from the new status bar (in low memory situations, other things may happen).
With some skins and Clie models, using icon substitution may result in an inconsistency between the style of the basic memorystick icon and the styles of selected, removed, and other memory stick icon states. You can choose the Fix MemoryStick icon consistency option in that case to replace the skin's MemoryStick icon by the MemoryStick icon from the collection.
Not all options work on all models. The non-working options should not show up in the preferences.
The options only take effect next time a skin is loaded.
On OS 5 models (not in expired mode), you can use the "Tweaks" item in the "Options" menu to set two graffiti parameters. The "animation" option chooses how fast the graffiti area maximizes/minimizes. The "ink" option sets the width of the pen line on the graffiti area.
The TH-55 handles the battery indicator differently from other models. You may need to edit the battery resources (e.g., using the tools on the Festus440 site) to make it do what you want, or you can use the always substitute battery option in the Preferences together with the icon collection. As always, the results of substitution may be hideous or may be quite fine. If you really like the substitute battery icons you can use them on NR, NX and NZ models as well.
The TH-55 displays a WiFi indicator in the statusbar area. This indicator is not a part of a statusbar skin, and is not handled by ClieSkinner at all. I assume that normally you will get the standard Sony WiFi indicator with a ClieSkinner statusbar skin. There is a generator for alternate WiFi icons at the Festus440 site.
If you do not wish to use a collection or a previous skin to supply low resolution Graffiti resources on an NR unit, you can instead have ClieSkinner scale down the high resolution resources. Unfortunately, this is somewhat slow, even in "fast" mode (you can choose between speed and quality). Note that you still need a collection to supply the low resolution statusbar resource.
There are many different combinations of type and creator ID that NR and NX skins on the Internet are distributed with. ClieSkinner tries to recognize the most common ones. But if you download an NR or NX skin that ClieSkinner does not show in its list, it may be using a different combination. Give me the URL for the skin and I will try to add support for it. Note that the UX can only use UX specific skins.
It should be theoretically possible to store ClieSkinner and the skins not just in VFS but in flash ROM via some utility like Jackflash. I have not tested this configuration. One important caution. Before you do that, make sure the skins are "deactivated". Skins downloaded from the Internet are sometimes "active" by default so that a reset after downloading will install them even without ClieSkinner. Any skins you copy into ROM should be deactivated first--otherwise, you might find that the skins always load. The easiest way to deactivate a skin is just to download it to RAM, do NOT do a reset, and run NXClieSkinner. NXClieSkinner automatically deactivates all skins it finds in RAM (but not in VFS). Moreover, you can only do this with version 0.23 beta and up. You should NOT put the ClieSkinner 000NXClieSkinner InternalS and 000NXClieSkinner InternalG databases into flash, because then you will no longer be able to change skins, and it might cause ClieSkinner crashes.
The Clie 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, ClieSkinner 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 (e.g., the Clie Launcher forces 8-bit depth), 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 ClieSkinner's attempt to set the default system depth. (Butterfly is reported to do so on the TH-55.) If you are running such a utility, use it rather than ClieSkinner for setting system depth or deinstall it.
Normally, Clie graffiti and statusbar skins contain a 4-bit depth component and an 8-bit component using the default PalmOS palette.
To improve quality, using the full version (or the seven day trial) you can use 16-bit skins. These display correctly in both 8- and 16-bit screen modes, though look best in 16-bit modes.
To support a 16-bit skin, you may need to go to the options to enable 16-bit support. Changing this setting may require two resets, because you can only change it with ClieSkinner completely disabled. Thus, unless you are starting from scratch, you will need to uncheck both graffiti and statusbar support, reset, change the two settings, and then any skins you load will only be shown after another reset. Of course after that second reset, changing will be instantaneous.
You should keep 16-bit support disabled unless you actually have skins that need it because these settings increase memory usage for ClieSkinner's internal databases.
Not all applications support 16-bit display. Those that do not will display the skin in downgraded 8-bit mode. Under OS5, 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.
For those applications that do not support 16-bit display, I include a copy of Force16. Make sure you read its documentation carefully before installing.
Warning 1: 16-bit skins cannot be loaded on NR units. Attempting to load such a skin may result in a crash.
Warning 2: Support for 16-bit skins may result in problems with some backup software because the ClieSkinner internal databases have an oversized (>65000 bytes) resource. Sony's OS5 MS Backup seems to work fine. Sony's OS4 MS Backup and Backupman may skip the ClieSkinner internal databases when restoring, but seem to work fine otherwise. In general, backup software may ask whether to skip the 000NXClieSkinner InternalG 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. ClieSkinner will regenerate it next time you load a skin (but it'll force another reset.) There is a crash-severity incompatibility with Codediver's WPDiver, but the latest version available from the Codediver developer fixes this.
Making 16-bit skins requires generating the appropriate 16-bit resources. Each resource should include a 4-bit and a 16-bit bitmap. The only catch is that if you do that, the main abmp 0x03e8 resource might end up exceeding the 65000 byte limit, and then you will be unable to copy or load the skin. ClieSkinner allows a workaround for this limit. With 16-bit skin support active, the abmp 0x03e8 resource may be split into two resources, an abmp 0x03e8 resource and a continuation resource of type 2bmp and id 0x03e8. When loading, ClieSkinner will simply merge the two binary resources together into a single image. There is a catch: you must split this resource within the bitmap data for the 16-bit component, not within a bitmap data header or the 4-bit component. The easiest way to ensure this is to split at the 65000 byte point.
You cannot split the Tbmp 0x03e8 resource with the current version. This means that you should not generate extended NR Graffiti skins. Instead, just generate an extended 16-bit NX Graffiti skin, and load that. In fact, it is recommended that all 16-bit skins be NX-format. You can, however, include the additional NR resources within the NX-format skin.
But by far the easiest way is just to use Festus440's VG Factory.
The author can be contacted by email at ap85@georgetown.edu.
There is a Yahoo discussion/support forum.
1.50 release: Support for different skins in different screen orientations with Mobile-Stream's Lanscape utility. See instructions. Support for changing Graffiti ink width and Graffiti area animation speed.
1.23 release 2: Fix major Force16 bug.
1.23 release: Fix keep-depth-on-reset bug.
1.22 release: Fix a reg code acceptance bug.
1.21 release: Fix icon 7330 and TH depressed battery in NX-NZ-TH-statusbar-icons.prc.
1.20 release: Allow toggling of search of PALM\Launcher directory in VFS. More reliable and faster VFS scan.
1.18 release: Minor bug fix. Changed display name from "Skinner" to "ClieSkinner".
1.17 release: New icons. Fix minor memory leak. Use a more portable method in renaming VFS files.
1.16 release: Fix minor bugs. No longer check for locking before deleting. Changed when no-collection warning appears. Fix major crash-severity bug in keep depth across resets mode.
1.15 release: Includes Force16 for forcing 16-bit mode on OS5 units.
1.12 release: Added pageup/down and jogdial navigation, allowed typing/entering a character to go to the skin starting with that character, and introduced the concept of the "active" list.
1.11 release: Tweak to support NR skins with resources whose lengths exceed the lengths of the bitmaps. Also, includes noreset.exe to disable reset bit on Palm databases.
1.10 release: Modified, more elegant "Layered Metals" skin. Included NR-compatible "Layered Metals" statusbar, and UX-compatible "Layered Metals" graffiti skin. Added option to control dithering in 16-bit mode under OS5. Emergency cleanup now disables option to force depth on reset. Removed unnecessary "composite with blank square option".
1.06 release: Slightly better coexistence with other skin changing utilities.
1.05 release: More than doubled VFS scan speed for typical users.
1.02 release: Fix bug in 16-bit mode toggling introduced 0.45 beta.
1.01 release: Easier 16-bit mode toggling. Changed filenames of Frankus skins. Added low resolution Graffiti resource collection for NX to NR conversion.
1.00 release: Fixed a depth change bug.
0.45 beta: Reverted to giving no choice between standard and extended 16-bit support.
0.44 beta: Added set system depth dialog.
0.43 beta: Allow choosing between standard and extended 16-bit support. Improved memory stick consistency fix.
0.42 beta: 16-bit substitute icon compositing.
0.41 beta: Faster NR graffiti resource downscaling.
0.40 beta: NR graffiti resource downscaling.
0.36 beta: Fix depth forcing on reset.
0.35 beta: Removed paletted skin support.
0.34 beta: Improved memory usage by disabling palette support by default (no skins that I know of use it). This requires disabling ClieSkinner and re-enabling it. Added an experimental 16-bit skin mode. Added display bit-depth switching.
0.33 beta: Fixed overwrite problems on moving skins to VFS. Created new icon set that can be legally distributed with a commercial version of ClieSkinner.
0.32 beta: Fixed registration bug and tweaked menu text.
0.31 beta: Added rename and multiple VFS volume support.
0.30 beta: Added shareware registration data.
0.28 beta: Fixed bug with list update.
0.27 beta: Fixed bug with deactivating pre-activated skin. Fixed bug with NX to NR bitmap conversion. Fixed bug with NR VG/statusbar roll-down.
0.26 beta: Fix name writing bug.
0.25 beta: Fix need-reset detection logic.
0.24 beta: Much faster loading of skins from VFS if there is about 1 mb of memory free.
0.23 beta: Added progress bar when loading skins from VFS. Support for skins in ROM.
0.22 beta: Add reset button.
0.21 beta: Bug fixes.
0.20 beta: NR hardware support? New icons. Many changes under the hood. New "replace with blank" option for missing stuff.
0.14 beta: Missing icon substitution.
0.13 beta: Documentation enhancements. NR70 skin support.
0.12 beta: Lots of enhancements
0.11 alpha: Optional VFS support
0.10 alpha: On the fly switching
0.03 alpha: Internal changes
0.02 alpha: Fix memory leak
0.01 alpha: First preliminary release