TWRP 3.0 and theme compatibility
Regarding the upcoming release of TWRP 3.0 and theme compatibility
In the not so distant future, TWRP will receive a major version bump to 3.0.
Amongst many other things, the changes will also include a new stock theme. It'll be a blend of the old stock theme and the Materialised theme.
During the last half year, there have been many changes to the theme engine that I'd like to (and need to) take advantage of.
The one that affects Materialised the most, is the introduction of multi language support: currently, all button labels are part of the button PNGs. I went down this road at a time when TWRP was using a rather ugly looking proprietary font format. But ever since we have True Type Font support, ugly looking fonts no longer are a nuissance. So far, I've refrained from making the required changes to make full use of TTF support, because it's quite an effort. Now, with multi language support on the horizon, I will have to make these changes to maintain full compatibility with TWRP.
There have been other changes, like the new terminal. It requires to use a software drawn keyboard to accomodate for additional keys (the current keyboard also consists of PNGs).
Other changes to the theme engine allow to significantly strip down the XML, so far Materialised doesn't take advantage of these possibilities.
The splash screen will no longer consist of a single static JPG, but will be an XML based page (like the rest of the ui).
This means the AIK integration of Materialised (to change the splash) will break as well and needs to be adapted.
So, point being:
Materialised will loose its compatibility once TWRP 3.0 will be released. I'll not have an updated version ready in time.
To prevent any harm to the device (and user confusion), a newly implemented theme version check will prevent Materialised from loading, so TWRP will automatically default back to the stock theme.
While it would be easy to trick the theme version check, I will not do this.
Sacrificing functionality for the looks was never the intention for this theme.
Instead, I'll be revising the XML and build it from scratch.
The result will be a much leaner version of Materialised (in terms of file size), but still with the looks and functionality that make it a worthwhile addition to TWRP.
As for an ETA: I'm aiming for end of march.
In the meantime, please help looking for potential bugs in the new stock theme, or consider to participate in translating the ui (I assume there will be an additional call to arms for that in the twrp threads).
Thank you for using Materialised.
/broadcast
