Sharing with everyone

The community addon repository, wmkeyboard-community-addons on GitHub, holds themes, layouts, icon packs, sticker packs, sound packs and snippet packs that people made and sent in. It is pre-added like the other two repositories, so what it holds shows up under Addons, and its themes and layouts also behind the Community themes and Community layouts rows. You can send your own from the app in a few taps. A GitHub account is the only requirement.

Sending a theme

WM Keyboard › Appearance › Keyboard themes

Every theme under Your themes has a globe icon on its card, Share with everyone. Built-in themes don’t, since they aren’t yours to publish. A family card sends the whole family, a separate card the one look it shows, the same as Export.

The dialog asks for:

• Name, the theme’s own name to begin with.
• Description and Tags, both optional. Tags are separated by commas.
• Licence: CC0-1.0 (anyone can use and change it, no credit needed), CC-BY-4.0 (they must credit you) or CC-BY-SA-4.0 (they must credit you and share their changes the same way).
• Replaces your earlier one, optional: the id of a theme you published before, to send a new version of it instead of a second theme.

Open GitHub opens a new issue in the community repository with all of that filled in. You check the box saying you made it, or have the right to share every picture in it, and press Submit. Nothing is sent from the app itself. The issue is filed by you, under your account, which is how the repository knows a later update comes from the same person.

Sending a layout

WM Keyboard › Layout & size › Key layouts

Each layout of your own, and each secondary layout, has Share with everyone in its ⋮ menu. The dialog is the same as a theme’s. Layouts that ship with the app have no such item.

Sending an icon pack

WM Keyboard › Appearance › Icons

Each installed pack with at least one icon in it has a globe button, Share with everyone, beside Export. The built-in icons have none. The dialog is the same as a theme’s, and it sends the same .wmicons file Export writes.

Sending a sticker pack

WM Keyboard › Tools › Stickers › Your stickers › Sticker packs

Each pack under Your packs with stickers in it has the globe button too. GitHub takes files of up to 24 MB, so a bigger pack is stopped in the dialog with a note to take some stickers out. The app itself installs packs of up to 64 MB.

Sending snippets

WM Keyboard › Text expansion

Export asks which format to write, and its last choice is Share with everyone. Snippets often hold personal text, so the dialog sends one folder at a time (or All snippets, when you pick that) and shows how many it is about to send, with a reminder to check them for addresses, phone numbers and passwords.

Sound packs

The app has no way to make a sound pack, so there’s no button for one. Build it in the web store’s sound pack builder and send it from there, or open Submit a sound pack on the repository’s GitHub page and drag the pack in.

Sending from the web store

The theme, layout, icon pack, sticker pack, sound pack and snippet builders in the web store have the same form under Submit to community, below Export. It builds the same issue, so something made on a computer goes through the same checks as one sent from the phone.

How the file gets to GitHub

The file reaches the issue one of three ways, picked by its size:

• In the link. Most colour and gradient themes and every ordinary layout fit in the link that opens the issue, so the form arrives filled in and you only press Submit.
• Pasted. Too long for a link but under about 60,000 characters: the app copies it, and you paste it into the Addon box on GitHub.
• As a file. A theme with photos in it is usually too big to paste. The app first offers Make smaller, which re-saves the background pictures as JPEG at keyboard width; that often brings it down to a paste. Animated GIFs and pictures with transparent parts are left as they are. Otherwise Save file writes a .zip, and you drag it into the Addon box on GitHub.
• Icon, sticker and sound packs nearly always go as a file. The .zip the app saves is the pack itself under a name GitHub accepts, so a .wmicons, .wmstickers or .wmsoundpack you renamed to .zip by hand works the same way. Snippets usually fit in the link.

What happens after you submit

The repository’s bot reads the issue within a minute or two. It checks the file with the same importer the app uses, so anything the app would refuse is refused there too, with the importer’s reason. It also checks the form itself: that the id is free, or belongs to your earlier submission when you are sending an update, and that a licence is chosen.

It then comments on the issue with a quick preview drawn from the file, and links to try it before anyone approves it: one opens the addon in the app, the other in the web store. The preview is the keyboard for a theme or layout, a grid of the icons for an icon pack and of the first 24 stickers for a sticker pack. Sound and snippet packs have nothing to draw, so their comment is the checks alone. For a theme or layout, a few minutes later the bot replaces that preview with a render of the real keyboard wearing it. If something needs fixing, the comment says what. Edit the issue and the checks run again.

When a maintainer approves it, the bot adds it to the repository and closes the issue with a link to install it. It then appears under Addons for everyone, and a theme or layout also under Community themes or Community layouts.

Remixes

Only themes and layouts carry a remix credit. A theme or layout installed from any repository remembers where it came from. Copy it, change it and send the copy, and the dialog says Credited as a remix of … with the original’s name and author. The repository’s page for your version shows Remix of with a link to the original. A theme you made from scratch, or from a built-in, has no such line.

Details

• Removing the community repository from Addons works like removing the others: permanent, and the Community themes row then offers to add it back instead of opening it.
• The issue is always filed on GitHub, even when the F-Droid build’s Servers screen points the repository at a mirror.
• Your theme’s own id and any background file paths are never sent; the export already replaces them, and the app installs a published theme under a fresh id.