[DEV] Additional themes for CS4

[McBainUK]

Check it out

http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Skin/...SkinThemes

[johnsonx42]

Very nice.

One minor dev issue: the Theme.xml files for the original CS4 themes are nice looking files with line-breaks, while the Theme.xml files for the new Reflect themes contain everything in one long line. Parsed the same by the program I guess, but rather hard for us humans to follow.

[McBainUK]

Johnson - us forum moderators can see your deleted posts, did you forget to scroll down?

Try using Firefox or another browser to view the XML - I find it can format it well. Unless you want to edit it of course...

[johnsonx42]

haha, I thought you might be able to see that deleted post, hence why I admitted I was an idiot in the 'reason for deleting'... yep, neglected to scroll down :o

I use Notepad++ to view and edit XML files. Yes, you're right, IE8 does format the file better, but as you said that's only good for viewing. I was just puzzled as to why the original theme.xml files were different than the new ones.... generated by a different method I guess.

I was able to make the change I wanted anyhow; I want the 8-channel tv guide to be the default no matter which theme I select. Once I found how the setting was made in the CS Blue theme.xml, it was easy to find and change in the new Reflect files.

The other change I thought I wanted to make to the theme.xml turned out to be a non-issue once I discovered the info I posted in the TV Guide text size thread. The new Reflect theme.xml files set the various text sizes to 0 - this caused the skin plugin to overwrite my changes to the TV Guide skin.xml file with what it thinks are the default sizes. But now that I've edited the SkinPluginConfig.xml and told it what I want the starting sizes to be, having the size defined in the theme.xml is a non-issue.

edit: ah, I found adding the XML Tools plugin to Notepad++ and then selecting the "Pretty Print (XML Only - with line breaks)" option makes these linear xml files much easier to read and edit.

[McBainUK]

I was just puzzled as to why the original theme.xml files were different than the new ones.... generated by a different method I guess.

The CS Blue themes were created by hand. Now that the SkinPlugin can save custom themes I expect Hairy used that feature to create the Reflect series of themes - hence the machine readable format.

edit: ah, I found adding the XML Tools plugin to Notepad++ and then selecting the "Pretty Print (XML Only - with line breaks)" option makes these linear xml files much easier to read and edit.

Great. Tools like Visual Studio do the same thing. It's all about have an XML aware text editor.

Thanks for checking out the Community Skin - it's strange to think my (and the gang's) work gets used all over the place, even California.

[Hairy]

The CS Blue themes were created by hand. Now that the SkinPlugin can save custom themes I expect Hairy used that feature to create the Reflect series of themes - hence the machine readable format.

Hells yeah he did. The Hairy Man avoids all the XML editing he can

[Hairy]

I was able to make the change I wanted anyhow; I want the 8-channel tv guide to be the default no matter which theme I select. Once I found how the setting was made in the CS Blue theme.xml, it was easy to find and change in the new Reflect files.

The other change I thought I wanted to make to the theme.xml turned out to be a non-issue once I discovered the info I posted in the TV Guide text size thread. The new Reflect theme.xml files set the various text sizes to 0 - this caused the skin plugin to overwrite my changes to the TV Guide skin.xml file with what it thinks are the default sizes. But now that I've edited the SkinPluginConfig.xml and told it what I want the starting sizes to be, having the size defined in the theme.xml is a non-issue.

As McBainUK pointed out, even I use the the skinplugin to build any new themes.

So for others who mightn't want to get too deep editing the XML's and have a particular layout preference for the themes. You can always make the changes to any given theme and simply save your edits for the future or if you prefer not to clutter up the theme section. You can simply copy the "...\Plugins\SkinPlugin4\CurrentTheme.xml", then rename and replace (or better yet backup the existing theme.xml) the "...\Plugins\SkinPlugin4\Resources(WS)\Theme name\Theme.xml".

That way loading and reloading the various themes, you'll maintain your layout preferences.

Just a heads up for those that mightn't want to do any xml editing.

[johnsonx42]

I guess I prefer making changes in the raw XML file since that way I know exactly what I changed. I also learn how things work that way... as you can see I've learned quite a bit about how CS4 and the Skin Plugin work their magic by poking around in the XML files.

[Hairy]

I didn't mean to discourage anyone from poking around in the XML's (that's exactly how I worked it out). I was aiming it more at all the scaredy cats who don't like editing xml code.

Yeah! you know who you are

[Fatman_do]

You don't know the hours I have spent going over these xml's....chilling. PVRX2 was a godsend as far as standardization is concerned.