[development] $custom_theme when does it take effect... when doesit not

[Daniel F. Kudwien]

> On our website we use different themes for different sections 
> of the site.  As the user browses to different sections of 
> the site, the theme is changed automatically by changing 
> $custom_theme global in hook_init().

If you're doing this in with custom code, you should give
http://drupal.org/project/sections a try.  The module has been thoroughly
tested and works AFAIK.  Similar, but different purpose is
http://drupal.org/project/switchtheme.

> The development question: I think the bug has something to do 
> with the code in the block module function 
> block_admin_display(). In this function the author of the 
> code tries to display a list of blocks for the theme the user 
> selected by changing  the global variable $custom_theme. The 
> problem with this approach is that outside of
> hook_init() I have found that changing $custom_theme variable 
> has no effect on changing the active theme.

You should not try to change the theme on block administration pages.  Above
mentioned modules implement exactly this exception.

Thanks,
Daniel