Theme development

Is there any way to define theme-specific form fields? For example to customize certain icons the theme uses?

I imagine something like a settings.php file in the template folder which implements the following functions:
[themename]_settings() defines the additional settings names.
[themename]_settings_form() displays additional settings fields.

In my continued effort to make forums look as different as possible from other node/comment pairs, I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how to alternate the class for a series of comments.

I think node.tpl.php has something like $node_count - I'm looking for something equivilent for comments if such a thing exists.

Objective is to have alternating background colors for a series of forum comments.

i'm trying to make my own theme out from the bluemarine theme.

i've disabled showing post information for pages, which is working with the bluemarine theme.
but not so in my own theme, there it is displayed!

this is strange, because i've just copied the bluemarine theme to a new directory and at the moment i've not done any changes to the template, except some css.

i'm afraid, i can't see why?
could somebody explain it to me?
thanks..

Background: I'd like to theme my forums comments differently than blog comments. To do this, I'll need to know the parent node 'type' within comment.tpl.php

The documentation touches on overriding functions to add variables, so I tried adding a template.php file containing the following:

I would like to make an external function library or class available site wide during content creation (Input format: PHP code). So that when I'm creating content I can use class member functions.

I've tried to include myfunctions.php at the top of the page.tpl.php but the functions (and variables) are not available during node creation. Could someone tell me where I should put this include?

Thanks

I run a corporate website, I have clients that alter the text size in their browsers. Then they call me saying the text is so small they can't read anything.

Is there a way in css to lock the text size?