Themes in Chronicle are simple collections of files which are populated and rendered via the HTML::Template or Text::Xslate module.
To create a new theme the simplest approach is to take an existing theme and modify it. Once you have a local theme you can cause it to be used like so:
chronicle --theme-dir=./themes --theme=local
This will ensure that your theme-templates are read from ./themes/local/.
If you would like to use a theme based on Text::Xslate, you have to specify
Xslate or XslateTT as an argument to --theme-engine for the Kolon and
TTerse syntax respectively.
Each theme should contain the following files:
archive.tmpl- This is used to build /archive/$year/$mon
archive_index.tmpl- Used to build /archive/ - A list of previous pages
entry.tmpl- This is used to write out the individual blog posts.
index.tmpl- This is used to build the front-page of your site.
index.rss- This is used to build the RSS-feed of your site.
page.tmpl- This is used to generate static-pages.
tag.tmpl- This is used to build the page /tags/$name/ - The list of posts with the given tag.
tag_index.tmpl- Used to build the page /tags/ - A list of previous tags
Beyond that you can move common code to "include files", which can be inserted via:
<!-- tmpl_include name='common.inc' -->
The supplied themes already make use of this facility to avoid repeating common look and feel items.
Non-HTML::Template themes use the file extension .tx for Xslate/Kolon and
.ttx for Xslate/TTerse.
If your theme directory contains a static/ subdirectory then the contents of that directory will be copied over to your generated site.
This is designed to allow you to include your CSS files, images, and other static resources that are used by your theme.