Thomas Dornscheidt from the
T3 Forum in Germany has put together this great guide for creating your own agenda backgrounds. PalmZone.net has been given permission to translate these instructions and post them here.
The
F3 T3AgendaBG program can be downloaded from here. This link automatically translates from German to English. The program itself fully supports both languages.
What would a Tungsten T3 be without personality?
It begins with a nice background picture in the Agenda view of the built-in Calendar application.
Its nice that I can switch the background picture, but why can’t I make my own background?
Its not that difficult and I made these instructions to help you.
The F3 T3AgendaBG program comes bundled with 3 sample background screens. 1 is built-in to the application itself and 2 are in separate files. Additional backgrounds are forthcoming and, of course, you can now make your own.
Note that these backgrounds must be installed into RAM. They cannot be read from an SD card with this program.
Send any feedback you have to me.
Instructions for Creating Background Files:
Needed Software:
· PalmBMX from the same site
· A Palm file manager, e.g.
FileZ or FileProg
· The following rcp file used to join the 4 bitmaps together into a single Palm resource file (prc):
makebin.rcp
Installation and Preparation:
Install PalmBMX per the instructions. Create a working directory for the resulting bitmaps that it will extract.
Place the PilRC_ZL.exe from the Zlauncher Thememaker in the working directory above.
Use a Palm File Manager to copy the file DatebookAgendaBG PDat.prc from ROM to RAM. This file will the backup to your PC the next time you Hotsync. Take this file from the backup folder on your PC and put it in your working directory above.
Start PalmBMX and from the file DatebookAgendaBG PDat.prc extract all the bitmaps to your working directory above.
(in PalmBMX use the menu option "Open Palm File" to open the prc file. Then set the “Path to Save Exported Images” to your working directory and click on the “Extract Bitmaps” button.
You should now have 4 bitmap images in your working directory.
These 4 images are combined in the following way:
Tbmp8000-8-d144.bmp - top left corner (240*240)
Tbmp8010-8-d144.bmp – top right corner (240*80 with portrait format, 240*240 with landscape format)
Tbmp8020-8-d144.bmp - bottom left corner (240*208 with portrait format, 240*80 with landscape format)
Tbmp8030-8-d144.bmp - bottom right corner (80*208 with portrait format, 240*80 with landscape format)
* It is important with any backgrounds to use the Palm color palette. This is different than the Windows color palette.
Note that part of bitmap #4 is never used -- the lower right (160*160 pixels) below line 208. This portion of the image can be filled with white space to make the final prc file smaller.
Now copy the makebin.rcp file to your working directory and from a Windows command line type:
"pilrc_ZL -ro -type rsrc -creator F3BG -name F3T3AgendaTest makebin.rcp F3T3ÁgendaTest.prc"
This will create the prc file named above. Note that in order for the Palm F3 T3AgendaBG program to recognize the file, the file name must begin with “F3T3Agenda”. The latter part of the name can be whatever you like.
Explanation of the above command:
-ro
| = create a prc file directly (otherwise only one buffer file (* bin) is provided)
|
-type rsrc
| = the prc file is a resource of the type “rsrc”
|
-creator F3BG
| = the prc file belongs to the program F3 T3AgendaBG
|
-name F3T3AgendaTest
| = the name of the background in the Palm program. The file name MUST begin with “F3T3Agenda” so that the program recognizes the background. The part of the name after that can be whatever you like and that is only part that is displayed in the Palm program.
|
makebin.rcp
| = our file for controlling how the images are combined into the PRC file.
|
F3T3AgendaTest.prc
| = the target file name
|
You can now install the background using Hotsync and use the F3T3AgendaBG program to activate your new background.
For the Experts:
If you would like to create a one-time installation version of the agenda background that does not require use of the F3 T3AgendaBG program, then use the following command to create a stand-alone DatebookAgendaBG PDat.prc:
"pilrc_ZL -ro -type rsrc -creator PDat -name DatebookAgendaBG PDat makebin.rcp DatebookAgendaBG PDat.prc"
Install it using Hotsync and the new background will be available.
NOTE!!! Uninstallation: Either use the F3TAgenda background program to delete or use any Palm file manager to remove or rename the DatebookAgendaBG PDat.prc and soft reset.
