Developing a skin. Need input.

[daphatty]

So I decided to take the plunge and try creating a skin of my own. I must say, I have a newfound respect for you skinners. This $hit is hard work!

The screen shot below represents my WIP skin. First, the resolution has been changed to 1280x960. I've mainly done this to see how GB-PVR would look with a larger image and to gauge what sort of challenges changing the background would bring about. Eventually, I plan on altering this image to fit my needs for a 16x9 interface. Additional changes include location, size, and task enabling.

Truth be told I must give all credit to Reboot. I'm basically altering one of his skins as my learning tool since I know nothing of XML (although I have programmed in C/C++). Reboot's skins are among my favorite so it seemed only logical to follow his work as a guide.

So, on to the issues. I have found one perplexing issue that is bothering me to no end. I cannot understand why the Clock and Next Recording panels have separate size and location settings in the clock/nextrecording.xml and skin.xml files. Changing the font size for those two panels has been a major PITA and I'm not satisfied with the results so far. I want the text quality to be clean and crisp, just like the title and button fonts. The stretched fonts just wont do. I'm using a size 24 Arial font for the button text, yet I am forced to use a stretched out size 12 font for the Clock and Next Recording panels. Using a larger font results in a cutoff, illegible mess. Anyone have any suggestions on this?

[tieke]

Whereabouts exactly are you changing the settings? I think your problem is basically that these are panels, which have their own skin.xml files in the panels skin directory, all you can do in the main menu skin.xml is to set their position and size.

[daphatty]

all you can do in the main menu skin.xml is to set their position and size.

That's exactly my problem. You can adjust the position and size of those panels in both the main skin.xml file and their respective .xml files in the panels folder. This presents a challenge when trying to adjust the size of the font. Instead of the viewable area of the font changing, the font itself stretches. I'd post a screenshot but I'm at work and dont have access to my HTPC.

[hansi]

There is no stretching if you make it the same size in both files:

E.g., setting it to 400x60, arial bold 24, and the time/date strings next to each other:

In ...\panels\clock.xml:

<settings>
<!-- text style -->
<TextStyles>
<TextStyle name="Clock" color="LightGray" typeFace="Arial" size="24" style="bold"/>
</TextStyles>
<!-- Composite Images -->
<CompositeImages>
<!-- Clock -->
<CompositeImage name="Clock" size="400,60">
<DrawRoundedRect loc="5,5" size="400,60" radius="5" borderWidth="1" borderColor="Transparent" fillColor="Black"/>
<DrawText text="@ClockText1" loc="15,15" size="140,60" textStyle="Clock" align="Left"/>
<DrawText text="@ClockText2" loc="155,15" size="230,60" textStyle="Clock" align="Left"/>
</CompositeImage>
</CompositeImages>
<!-- special elements -->
<SpecialElements>
<SpecialElement name="ClockPanel" size="400,60"/>
</SpecialElements>
</settings>

and in ...\main menu\skin.xml:

<SpecialElement name="Panel" panelName="Clock" visible="true" transparency="0.7" loc="1,1" size="400,60"/>

HTH

[reboot]

Thanks for the credit
Changing the actual clock and next recording panels isn't always necessary.
If you resize their attributes in the main menu, things CAN get messed, as you're finding out with a double size background.
This is where you must resize where they appear in main menu, and then change the size in the panels as well.
This doubles the work, especially if you intend to put a composite image box around them, or a background image behind them.
You may find (if using one of my main menu skins) that the clock and next recording panels, are "on top" of a Transparent box. If you intend to keep it transparent, you can actually remove the lines in the code that have both a transparent border and transparent fill.
The Mountain Lake main menu skin is one of the simplest, as it has no boxes around anything, except the selected button. This probably isn't the best skin to start with, because a lot of the elements have been removed to cut down on code size.
If you start with the stock Blue skin, you can see a lot more of the possiblities.