settings plugin/class

[jorm]

I was planning on looking at jasonf widgets stuff. I really just wanted three classes for sub to add to the library.

One is a singleton that plugins can regsiter too. Just holds handles to the different plugins, to alert them and get their settings handler.

The second is an interface that the plugins can derive from has a few methods getName, getGroupName (revens first screen), gethandler and settingsupdated.

The 3rd is the interface for the handler. It will draw the settings page and handle the items.

I want to expand my basic settings app to be able to update anything in the gbpvr.xml by default showing

checkboxes, choiceboxes by using the default handler which reads the xml file.

Can you think of any other widget that might be useful?
I need to look at the library.

jorm

[reven]

useful widgets
- checkbox
- radio button
- file browser (like mce does)
- folder browser
- side to side buttons (like gbpvr does with the "Recording Quality" (ie low,medium,high, custom1, custom2).
- textbox
- onscreen keyboard (we can use the code i wrote for the onscreen keyboard, will probably have to be adapted, but its really skinnable.
- numeric updown control (cant remember what vs calls this exactly, hopefully you know what i mean).


those are all i can think of.

[jorm]

I wonder if jasonf's widget library has
- file browser (like mce does)
- folder browser




Is your onscreen keyboard part of the widget library as well?

[reven]

Quote[/b] ]Is your onscreen keyboard part of the widget library as well?

nah its not, but the source code is availalbe if anyone wants it, just ask. has to be tweaked thou, there are a few bugs, i just never got around to resolving them (eg only letters can be typed in via a normal keyboard).

Quote[/b] ]I wonder if jasonf's widget library has
- file browser (like mce does)
- folder browser

doubt it, but these would be nice. the ultimate goal is to configure gbpvr once from the config, and then after every upgrade or new plugin you download (from the autoupdate plugin) you can configure it from within gbpvr itself, all via a remote.

[jasonf]

Quote[/b] ]I wonder if jasonf's widget library has
- file browser (like mce does)
- folder browser

There's no filesystem browsers in the current version of the library. I was working to get the current version into some sort of release state before I was going to create more widget controls.

As I see it, a file/folder browser would probably be based on several different base widget controls, to offer different views. For instance, a list view, an icon view, and a tree view might be useful.

There is already a List control, but it might need to be modified in order to offer icons in the list. There is not presently any control that would be the equivilent of an Icon view, so that would have to be created first, and then a filesystem version can extend from it. And, there's no TreeView control.

That's not to say that something couldn't be whipped up quickly by just using the current List control, and then modify that new control over time to add the additional views.

Quote[/b] ]useful widgets
- checkbox
- radio button
- file browser (like mce does)
- folder browser
- side to side buttons (like gbpvr does with the "Recording Quality" (ie low,medium,high, custom1, custom2).
- textbox
- onscreen keyboard (we can use the code i wrote for the onscreen keyboard, will probably have to be adapted, but its really skinnable.
- numeric updown control (cant remember what vs calls this exactly, hopefully you know what i mean).

From this list, I currently have a checkbox and a scrolling textbox (horizontal and vertical). But, that textbox was intended for displaying text moreso than receiving text input from the user (that was to come later).

[jorm]

jasonf, sounds good. I will watch for its release.

Reven, can you send me the onscreen keyboard code so I can add it.

> does the dll you created do the drawing? or does it hand off > the drawing for each plugin to that plugin?
By default if the user returns null in the getSettingsHandler call the settings plugin will do the drawing but if they specify their own class then it will instead.

[reven]

what ever happened to this? jorm you ever get anywhere. i had an idea that would probably work for us to get this to work, i was reading over at http://www.thecodeproject.com and came across an article on how to do plugins via an interface, which i presume is pretty much the exact same way sub does it. anyway if we make a settings plugin that just has an interface, and then loads plugins that implement this interface, and if we use static variables for all the settings (eg "slideshowinterval" etc) changes made from one instance (ie the ISettings plugin) would be seen in the plugin plugin (ie the IMenuTask one).

im pretty sure this would work, im not exactly sure how .net does this things, but since they are being run by the same process (namely gbpvr.exe) the static variables should be seen in both instances as the same variable.

then all we have to do is implement a ISettings interface which pretty much has the exact same methods as the IMenuTask, and let the plugins that want to use this feature just implement the interface.

easy aye?

and we could also add support for overscan (im not sure when/if sub would cater for this), but by doing a box/screen sizer thingy like xbmc/mediaportal we could set the bounds of what the user can see on their tv, eg my tv would fit best at 10,12,710,467 and then each plugin could then use this value (call it "ScreenBounds" or something) and in the IMenuTask render method just add one extra line

return g.DrawImage(compositeScreenImage,ScreenBounds);

that way the entire compositeScreenImage (ie the normal image we all return from that method) would be drawn to better fit the tv.

ok, so what do you guys think? sub is this a waste of time, are you going to be adding the screen adjustment stuff soon (i know you dont like tipping your hat, but it would be nice to know im not going to be wasting my time on this stuff).

oh and anyone have any experience with this, and know for a fact my logic is sound, or complete rubbish?

[reven]

oh and heres the codeproject article i mentioned
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/Plugin...opment.asp

[jorm]

I did not get very far, I found I was stretched kinda thin at that point. Was just trying a proof of concept. I will read the code proeject article. It sounds like a good solution.

[sub]

Funny you should mention it. I have added an ISettings interface in the next release...but it does do much at this stage. Its currently only got a method to tell a plugin to reload its settings. I was primarily thing about the skin, but maybe I'll use for other things too. I'm still thinking about it. Unfortunately I'm pretty busy with some other stuff at the moment, so I havnt got much time I cant spend on this.