Community skin project

[reven]

theres like 5 threads at the moment all seem to be covering the same basic thing, thats why i havent shown any real interest, to many threads to keep track of (and i have very little time these days to program, let alone to skin).

[Fatman_do]

The skinners in the community does not seem that interested in a "community" project.
Tipstir has shown no interest. He goes his own way.
Dottore does not show any interest.
Old Dog opposes or show no interest to suggestions.
THis means that all skinners will go their own ways......as before

McBainUK and Jeff are the only plugin programmers that has show a little interest.

The only person that could set Guidelines or rules is Sub.

What I am trying to do with my document is to collect facts to make a desition upon. I am sure Sub will listen and consider the facts presented.
The fact list may also hopefully be a guideline at the end.

So lets work on fact/information list to present to Sub.

What information are you looking into? I have a list of sizes and ratios of listviews, and popups started, as well as text styles. These are based on 'blue'. The problem is, I don't know what use this data is, especially considering the new changes comming down the pipeline.

[dottore]

for me, this is too much english. too many pages to read, too few time to do that. i have my own skinning system, a basic skin from which other skins could inherit is not possible for my skins. every skin i make has some special positioning and new ideas and it cannot consist of just overwriting images.

take a look at the icon-view highlights in the photo libraries of sassari and olbia: they have nothing in common. the resolutions are different.

to sum it all up: a basic skin which everyone could use is nothing for me. i need "freedom"

look at mediaportal: there are dozens of xml-files for skinning....way too much. therefore there are only few skins, but they are complete. but where do the skinning-problems in gbpvr come frome?
- lazyness: i don't want to skin every plugin, i don't use every plugin.
- plugins: some of the plugins are hardcoded to their resolution, positions and so on (x-suite) look at the my series: a lot of work for a skinner, but every little element is skinnable, the image-names are easy to understand.

there must be a documentation of the various elements in the plugins (this is what you currently do) and there must be plugin-updates which allow better skinning.

[MixMan]

You are abolutly right Dottore.
No idea to make a standard "core" cummunity skin.
No one will maintain it because everyone has their own ideas how a skin should look like.
But it would be possible for Sub to make an image based skin, where the image names are well defined in a documentation.
Plugin developers would most likely make skin that would work with a "default" skin.
Then it is up to the skin developers to use that standard for naming or not.
I would use that standard for sure. FatMan_do and Old Dog probably would do that to. Then the plugins would directly be compatible with our skins.
So finding a common naming standard would benifit all of us, plugin developer, skinners and end users.

And as I showed you, it would also be possible to get 720x480 plugin skins with a "standard" image naming to work with Sassari. Just minor defining of text styels for different resolutions in the baseskin.xml

It is possible to do all this with very little changes and work.

[mikey]

I'm not convinced by this push for a image based skin. I think sub was on the right track with his XML skin, and the changes he has said he is making.

Meedio is often recognised as one of the best apps for skinning. Its general approach to skinning is very similar to what is now offered in GB-PVR. In Meedio there is a standard skin called 'default'. New skins are defined by creating a new skin directory and copying in just the files you want to change or override. Everything else is picked up from the default skin. This is very similar to GB-PVR's skin fallback mechanism

There is also a resources file that defines things such as standard colors and fonts. This file is usually copied to the new skin and edited by the user to suit their skin appearance. GB-PVR's BaseSkin.xml is effectively the same thing. Currently BaseSkin.xml is only used for defining the buttons, but soon we will be able to add standard colors and fonts.

Sticking with XML will make it much easier to produce a skin. Read what sub wrote:

I would like a new user defining their own skin to only have to a couple of simple tasks along the lines of:

1) Create new skin directory with the name of their skin.
2) Copy the BaseSkin.xml and preview.jpg from the standard skin into their new directory.
3) Create a new Background.jpg for the background they'd like to use
4) Edit BaseSkin.xml to customise the look of the buttons (may be images or XML), and to set the colours and fonts they'd like to be used.
5) Start the application and update the preview.jpg to what their skin really looks like

From then on, they would not need to maintain that skin, even as future versions of plugins are made etc.

I think he has got this just right. When creating a new skin I would only like to draw graphics for the new buttons, then in BaseSkin.xml I would specify the fonts I would like to use, and the colors for popup background and the radius for their rounded corners (hint hint sub). Creating a skin this way would be a five minute job.

On the other hand, an Image based skin would take a huge amount of work for replacing graphics, effectively putting it out of the reach of average user. I also think you'd need an endlessly growing set of images to cover popups as they're added. You couldnt rely on the graphic from the default skin, because it'd have the wrong colors. If it was XML based, the colors would be correct since the popup would use the colors in BaseSkin.xml.

Anyway, thats my thoughts on the subject.

-Mike

[sub]

and the radius for their rounded corners (hint hint sub).

Thats not a silly idea.