Each page set is created with a default theme to use for its elements. Each page within a page set may override this default, and each element within a page may override the page's default theme. This gives the page set administrator a great deal of freedom over look-and-feel. For instance, to recreate the .LRN style where user pages are decorated with colored boxes, while elements on the admin page are undecorated, assign the standard theme to the page set, create a page entitled "admin", and assign it the no graphics theme.
Themes are declared through the Layout Manager Tcl API.
Example:
layout::theme::new \
-name default \
-description "Default OpenACS Theme" \
-template /packages/layout-manager/lib/themes/standard
The "description" parameter, preferably localized, is displayed to the user in select widgets used to assign a theme to a pageset, page or element.
The "template" parameter points to the master template, which typically renders the element title and content, such as is done by the standard theme template:
The element content is rendered with the slave template tag. Note that the standard theme template references the standard portlet classes defined in the default openacs theme's CSS. These classes are also used by ACS core packages that render content in "boxes", such as the "application" and "subsite" boxes displayed by the default acs-subsite index page. Often you can "theme" your site simply by modifying these standard classes, maintaining a consistent look to "boxes" generated manually by core packages and those generated by the Layout Manager package.@template@