NOOB Questions : Using controls.dat or reinventing a MalaFE Theme

[Aberto2k]

Hello everyone,

So after successfully getting my games, videos, laserdisc and v-pinball to run through Launchbox/Bigbox on my test bed, I'm ready to start tweaking the GUI to better work with my cabinet. I basically want to recreate my cabinet friendly front end (a modified version/combination of the RetroGUI and Nanocade themes from MalaFE) - but for a higher 4:3 resolution, the example screenshot below is 640x480 - and I know I can go higher and get more real-estate; possibly even go responsive. 

Now, I'm currently slogging through the Theme Building videos on YouTube (and slowly losing my mind) - this isn't like any FE I've worked with before (AtomicFE and MalaFE), but I certainly can appreciate the power and very grateful someone has built the Community Theme Editor (yay Dave). I also have a few questions before I go too deep into the videos I hope you all can answer for me. 

1.  I've noticed there's no meta-data field for controls.dat (or other meta data files) to display the controls used on a given game (yes, I'm strictly talking about MAME here - I don't emulate home consoles on my cabinet) - is there a way to pull that information into a theme so that I can have the virtual control panel show people which buttons, number of players and joysticks to use? (see screen shot below - the exit and coin buttons are static)
2. The bottom of the screen shot shows a marquee of navigation commands that scrolls across the screen (and loops) - does the theme editor have this function? I didn't see anything to that effect on any existing theme.

Finally I have a technical question - in order to work on this new theme I've decided to move my LaunchBox build to an external drive so that I can work more easily than in my cold garage - will this be an issue when working on a theme?

This will be a learning experience for me, I hope to complete something and share it here. 

Regards, 

Aberto2k