Why the mystery over how to build skins?

[Anthony2816]

Either I just haven't found the right place, or info on building skins is a *lot* harder than it needs to be. Seriously, obviously some people know how to do it, because there are a lot of fancy skins available...so how come someone hasn't put together a basic how-to-do-it web page?

Sure, it's possible to do it by spending a bunch of time dissecting several existing skins, but why put new skin-builders through a hazing process like that? Doesn't seem like it does BSPlayer any favors by keeping this info secret. It's not like someone is making money selling skins.

For instance, what's the format for the rgn.dat and rgnfs.dat file? They seem to contain hexadecimal versions of the size of the skins, but in multiple places, so it's hard to know just which bytes to alter.

Can't one of you skinning mavens (or better yet, the BSPlayer authors) share your knowledge in an online tutorial for the rest of us?