Developing plugins

[Jeff]

What I would suggest you do is install the files as part of your skin collection and, in your plug-in, copy them from your known installation location to the current skin if needed. Again, if you look at the weather plug-in as an example you will see how it does this. The weather plug-in will work with all skins by copying the default skin files form the blue skin if none is found in the currently active skin.

Jeff

I just just checked the source of the commongbpvrutilities. When you create a dialog box, if the common dialogs skin subdirectory does not already exisit in the currently active skin it will be created and the files from the blue skin will be copied over. If the sub directory does exisit, then it is assumed to have the needed files. So, as long as you install the common dialog blue skin as part of your package, it should already work in the Collection skin.

Jeff

[Old Dog]

Some of this should work it's way out as Sub gets his skinning/plugin guidelines document out. Without a set of rules or best practices on how things should be done, there is no way to get the compatibility established.

All you can do is set the guidelines on how the Appearance Manager is going to work, and what it expects. It is then up to the various Skins to conform to that, so that they work with it.

1. Have an "Appearance" folder (with sub-folders) that act as a depository for background images, task images, button images, ect.

2. Appearance manager reads config.xml to identify current skin. Then read baseskin.xml for a tag like <AppearanceManager>True</AppearanceManager> to check for skin compatibility (relies on skinner using defined guidelines).

3. Changes then could be done (which is so far file moving & renaming?) in that skin directory.

These are really good thoughts! I'm going to move them over to the Appearance Manager thread.

Thanks guys,
-David

[Old Dog]

As part of the Appearance Manager implementation, I am making some small edits to the Main Menu skin.xml file. Currently I have my own code for searching and replacing in this "text" file.

Also, I can see the possiblity of programatically editing BaseSkin.xml in the future.

Can I use the SkinHelper facilities for doing this?

Thanks,
-David