The first thing todo is to decide on a name for you new theme and create one of the following directory's;

$HOME/.themes/[theme_name]/matchbox/
$PREFIX/share/themes/[theme_name]/matchbox/

Your theme.xml file will go in this directory together with any images your theme uses. To then test your theme, start matchbox like

Alternatively you can also use 'matchbox-remote -t [theme_name]' to switch themes on the fly whilst matchbox is executing.

If enabled enabled both GConf and XSettings can also be used to change the matchbox theme.

If matchbox fails to parse a theme file, it will switch to its default theme and print basic error information on why it failed to stdout.

Now open up the theme.xml file and create the top level <theme> element.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<theme name="An Example theme" 
     author="Matthew Allum - mallum@handhelds.org"
       desc="A simple demonstartion theme" 
    version="1.0" engine_version="1" >

 <!-- this is where the actual theme definition is defined -->

</theme>

The various theme attributes should be self explanatory. The 'engine_version' attribute should be set to 1 as to work with 0.5+ versions of matchbox.

The theme.xml file is then split into 2 major sections. The first listing the actual resources ( such as fonts and images ) required by the theme and then the next listing how these resources are used for the decoration of each type of window frame.