separating layout from theme?

[fredf]

Hello.

I am using JBoss Portal 2.6 and I want to use the same theme on page A and page B but use different number of columns for the pages. Is this possible? As far as I can see, the number of columns is defined within each theme, so this is "tightly coupled" and not separatable.

I do not want to define two almost identical themes for the two pages just because they use different number of columns.

The ideal situation for us would be to define some parts of the theme, eg. portlet images (portlet-titlebar-right, left, center etc), number of colums and the widht of the columns and assign this to each portal page aside from the other theme properties like background image.

What are the chances of seeing these features in the nearest two months?

[theute]

Theme and layout are disctinct.

You *can* do both in the same file for simplicity, but the default is to have a layout *and* a theme.

Look at the renaissance theme, it is just a CSS, it goes with the default layout which is a 2 column layout.

So you can already have a single theme and several layout to use on different pages.

[fredf]

Ok. Thats weird, because our "shipped" portal had just one css file with both theme and layout defined in it. What do I name the file containing the layout and where do I put it? Also how do I set a page to utilize this layout css file?

thanks.

[theute]

See:
http://docs.jboss.com/jbportal/v2.6/user-guide/en/html/dynamicity.html#pagethemelayout
To choose your layout and theme using the management portlet (note that you can do it in the XML descriptors as well)

Here is the doc for packaging theme and layout.
http://docs.jboss.com/jbportal/v2.6/reference-guide/en/html/themeandlayouts.html

If you look at the sources of the portal you got you will find the layout defined here:
core/src/bin/portal-core-war/layouts/generic/*.jsp
and the default theme here:
core/src/bin/portal-core-war/themes/renaissance/*

[fredf]

thanks a bunch!