An Open Letter to the LiteStep Community

Yes all you know about this post in the Mailing List for LiteStep users on 18th July by Scott Kindorf. His post was motivated by a review written by PokPok at PC911.com so we should get back to PokPok’s review of LiteStep. PokPok said “[...] I still couldn’t even begin to get LiteStep to work. I tried out the BlueVoid {by Marvilla} Fully Themed Installation by WareWolf version of LiteStep, version 0.245″ (Almost all users know BlueVoid distribution seems to be rather obsolete). And he went on: “at least I could find no specific mention that LiteStep would work with Windows 2000″…. He installed BlueVoid on Windows2000. (Oh, that requirements should be on Win98, sorry.)

In the first place Scott concentrated upon themes for LiteStep. Yes as he said in the recommendation 2, 3, 4, 5, some themes are restricted within certain components in their own system. Icons for PhotoShop or PSP (many themers should put them on their default desktop) may be unnecessary for someone (atleast for me), and whether such icons should be decorated may be a case-sensitive issue since PS5.5 costs over $780 in Japan :( Yea PS is worth such price, but…

There is an informal commitee (hey, what is “formal”?) for theming in Japan. Members have been talked on theming in general, and they currently recommend to make a structure of directory more simple:

and now the informal commitee recommends to avoid using theme.rc or dllname.rc files for constructing themes because its diffusion or fragmentation.

For Scott’s recommendation 1, I will agree with David Fraser’s response: ” !DynamicFolder: in the popups is a better way of getting around this, and with the latest build supporting start menu variables, makes things a lot friendlier”. In fact, this is a reason for my recommendation to use popup.dll in my Install Manual of LiteStep. The start menu will be a better way to access to many apps people make use of. And anomalous locations (ex. in my case, D:\program_files\NoteTab\notetab.exe) should be ignored or emphatically indicated in readme.

However the problem remains as to documentation which Scott wants in 11th recommendation as “documentation, documentation, documentation!” and George points out (I do not think of many documents for LS itself and modules as being suck, though). We all know LSFAQ, Manual for 0.24.5, and other many documents on the web. Or, we CAN search such useful webpages by Google, AltaVista, or so. In principle, we must not be waited on hand and foot for using freewares. Now in Japan, there are some instructions to install and update LS and themes for newbies, but they (include mine as well) lack in compatibilities with other pages, and lack in totality. So newbies in Japan have to read many pages tracing links, or post a question in the Mailing List called [jlsug] (=Japan LiteStep User’s Group list) or in BBSs at BlueTopaz, LS World in Japan, or TFT. Yes, as Joel D. Parker (rootrider) said, PokPok is an average newbie to LiteStep I think. His actions are resemble with mine in the last year. And for newbies in Japan who can not read English, the situation will be even worse. Formerly I said “we must not be waited on…” but a learning of English seems to be too hard, only for using LiteStep. One reason for existing JAPANESE webpages on the web is to bridge the language gap. I do not want to make some language divide on the web though the learning of English is very useful for knowing everything in English :)

For Scott’s 6th recommendation, I think readme files for each themes should not be restricted to denominators of newbies. It is just redundant to write an instruction from A to Z in each readme in each theme. Only necessity is to indicate what are conditions for using each theme and what are theme-specific, or system-specific features. And to inform them how to use text editors or like that, we can point some webpages on which such basic instructions are explained. Again, we must not be waited on hand and foot for using text editors, and we have not to request such basic instructions to LiteStep community. Here is not an open school of PC in general :P So please do not ask me how to decompress .zip files or what is the best text editor (who knows?).

And remaining recommendations. 7th is natural, 8th is not necessary for each theme (sure, instructions to go back to Explorer must be needed), 9th is also not necessary. My answer to the 10th recommendation is “just nothing to do with me”. Yes, if you want to use “lite” step, you can do use something lighter than Explorer. But I think the lightness of the performance of LiteStep should be one of advantages of default systems which we can make some configuration only with daily build (without any images?). Such lightness is not the condition for THEMES.

Finally in the 12th recommendation, Scott demands satisfactions of themers. Yes, scripting in step.rc should be clear to many users for making use of LiteStep from right now! We can not modify a configuration if it was written in Abracadabra (for many foreign users, in Japanese :P). But from the very beginning, step.rc is a mistery for newbies, eh? Here I guess also that phrase, we must not be waited on blah blah. To turn toward a new world, we should take some (even if little) effort. In other words, to STEP into another world you should move your leg by yourself. Members in the LiteStep community and webmasters at each website are colleagues, not Con-Way or FedEx.

Anyway, Scott’s post was very useful for themers and I hope they will make themes more intelligible for everyone.