New Skin System: The Collection

[Old Dog]

its not really feasible to change skin on the fly on the mvp as its driven by the gbpvrrecordingservice

so to see any changes in the skin requires you to run

net stop "GB-PVR Recording Service"

then

net start "GB-PVR Recording Service"

and obviously once you stop the service you cant see the mvp screen and have to wait for it to reconnect ......

much simpler to do the changes on the PC and then test if its good for MVP

the only possibility would be if David could come up with some method of previewing what you had chosen for mvp by building a jpg on the fly, but personally I dont think its worth the bother

tkgafs

Actually, to effect the changes on the PC I have to terminate GBPVR then restart it. The Appearance manager simply implements a preview of what the changes will be when GBPVR is restarted. But I sure wouldn't want to terminate the recording service while it was recording a program.

[Old Dog]

Sub, something to think about...

How about a flag within your code directing all plugins and core functions that they should reinitialize their GUI (cache?). Of course the plugins would need to test the flag.

[reven]

it would probably be easier to fake a restart of the entire gbpvr gui, just reloading the entire frontend. that way no plugins would have to be altered just an extra method (complicated method probably) be added to api.

[Fatman_do]

What would be nice is if the Appearance manager could be used with any skin collection, not just The Collection set of skins. Old Dog any thought of expanding this out to be used with other skins, and making the Apperance Manager a general skin switching utility.

I created the following directory "....\gbpvr\skin\Collection\Backgrounds\Misc". Then copied other backgrounds into it and that worked fine. I imagine Button sets and skin effects can be added as well.

Much more work will need to be done to make it universal. I suspect the application would need to read the config.xml for:

<!-- Skin settings -->
<RootSkinDirectory>.\skin\</RootSkinDirectory>
<ActiveSkin>Blah Blah</ActiveSkin>

Then make the correct changes to that skin. Also skins would need a universal naming convention for modified elements.

I guess that is enough until this migrates into the Development forum.
(I am a skinner, not a coder. That is all I can bring to the table.)

[Old Dog]

I created the following directory "....\gbpvr\skin\Collection\Backgrounds\Misc". Then copied other backgrounds into it and that worked fine. I imagine Button sets and skin effects can be added as well.

Yes, anyone can add backgrounds, buttons, or skin effects. Please do.

Note that currently the naming convention for the Main Menu Button image files must be maintained. Of course, for use with The Collection skin they must all be maintained.

-David

[Old Dog]

The current version of the Appearance Manager simply enables/disables task images. In the future it will support selection.

[Old Dog]

Yes, anyone can add backgrounds, buttons, or skin effects. Please do.

You might bundle your contributions into "SkinPack"s, zip them up, and post them.

-David

[Old Dog]

much simpler to do the changes on the PC and then test if its good for MVP

First note that I do not know anything about the MVP so this may not make sense...

Appearance.exe is a stand-alone application. You can run it from Windows. The only caveat is that it will restart GBPVR.exe on exit.

[nightwalker]

I don't see how you can run an external app on the MVP. While i use it exclusively it does have some limitations. I think this being one of them. At least for me it's not a big deal to pop up GBpvr on the PC for screen changes.

While I'm here just wanted to say you're doing a he** of a job. While the skins are still in flux a bit, this series has potential not only out of the box but also for those tweakers among us.

[Old Dog]

I don't see how you can run an external app on the MVP. While i use it exclusively it does have some limitations. I think this being one of them. At least for me it's not a big deal to pop up GBpvr on the PC for screen changes.

While I'm here just wanted to say you're doing a he** of a job. While the skins are still in flux a bit, this series has potential not only out of the box but also for those tweakers among us.

I'm not sure but, I think tkgafs idea was to run it on the PC as a convienience then manually effect the changes on the MVP.