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Originally Posted by Theophilus
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Basically, in the .cab you'll find files with extension ".000", ".001", ".002". The extensions are not important.
The files names you can find are: Ostwater tdywater, ec. Those are the pictures (renamed .bmp files) And there is also another file with the name of the theme (more or less), surely it contains all the colors and parameters.
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This is correct, though the above applies to standard PPC themes. Some of the third party application themes muddy the water a bit. If you want to check it out yourself, just open a tsk file in Winzip or other zip utility. No need to rename it to .cab or anything.
A few other notes on the files in a tsk file:
Its actually 0stwater.002 (A "zero", not an "oh") - This is the image used for the menu.
tdywater.001 - this is the today screen image
Both of these can be jpg or png or gif files. I don't know if bmp's will work or not.
xxxx.000 - this is the file which contains all the other info about the theme (background color, font, etc.) xxxx can be just about any name I believe. It is indeed a binary file, so you'll need a hex editor if you want to mess with it. Basically, the meat of the file are some indexes and associated values. These values are what you change to change the colors and other attributes of the theme. The trick is to know what index controls what attribute. I haven't seen a list, so you'd have to find one or figure it out yourself using trial and error.
There was an excellent article I ran across on this subject, which I have lost the link to, unfortunately. I'll post it if I find it. Also you can check this
article on Spb's website.
While you could create and edit themes by directly manipulating these files, I frankly don't think it would be worth the effort. Just use one of the several nice theme editors that are available. I think you would save yourself a lot of grief.
