Skinning XGuide

[Kevl]

Have fixed the oversized popup buttons and updated skin to use the your latest parameters



Kev

[fla]

Looking good! New version on the wiki with one more skinnable XSearch popup. It's the popup that appears from XRecord's Schedule menu when you select an item in the list (other than the "Add Entry" item). In fastfind\skin.xml, look for composite images FutureRecordingPopupBackground (already existed), FutureRecordingPopupCursor, FutureRecordingPopupItemName, FutureRecordingPopupItemValue and special element FutureRecordingPopupBoxButtons.

There's only one hardcoded popup left in XSearch, the one for the "Advanced" button. Hope I can finish it before my 1 week (work related) trip on Saturday.

[Kevl]

Only 1 screen left now in Xsearch. But its one with a keyboard on it so it might be tricky.

Have tidied up the last popup screen and have even rearranged the left and right arrows.
I think the placement of these is now improved. Have also edited the buttons to make the colours and style used more in keeping with the other buttons.


Have a good "holiday" next week :-)


Kev

[fla]

From my hotel room... New version on the wiki that makes the XSearch "Advanced" popup screen skinnable. Look for anything with "AddFutureRecordingPopup" in fastfind\skin.xml. Also there are a few new "Element name" elements to make the arrows clickable with the mouse.

That's all for XSearch and XGuide.

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Glad to hear your hotel room is suitably equiped for further progess on XSuite. Pity you had work to do also - which I'm sure was a terrible distraction. :-)

If I wanted to display the name of the subguide on the top left of the EPG screen (rather than the fixed text "XGUIDE") then presumably I need to substitute Text = "XGuide" with Text = "@xxxx"

If this would work, what would xxxx be?


Kev

[fla]

Hi Kev,

Yes work is always annoying... The weather in Graz has been colder and wetter than Montreal and normally no civilized place is colder than Montreal.

I'm not sure I understand what you want to see when you say "the name of the subguide". Three different XGuide skin files have a DrawText with text="@PluginName" which XGuide will replace with the plugin name found in the setting.xml's PluginDisplayName element. You can hardcode your own strings in those three places instead of using @PluginName if that's what you want. If it's something dynamic (other than the plugin's name which I support already), then I would need to code something in XGuide to replace another (yet unnamed) parameter.

I took a quick look at the XRecord render code and there are many files with hardcoded numbers. Are you only interested in XGuide (and XSearch since that's where many of XSuite's popups come from) or do you also want Meedio to support XRecord?

Does anyone want XRecord to be skinnable so it can be used on a higher resolution screen?

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Re my @text string.

One of the main features (for me) in XGuide is the fact that one can have mulitple guides (accessed by the CTRL-Y yellow key). Thus one can partition a huge list of channels into "subguides" such as News, Films, Sport etc. This allows quick access to say films when one is in a film watching mood etc. In Europe a motorised satellite dish will find a couple of thousand channels so having multiple guides is quite handy - else the downkey on the remote suffers and you get arthritis of the thumb. :-)

As you know, one programmes the channels contained in the subguides and names them via the XGuide plugins tab in GBPVR setup app.

I was just wondering if the name of the selected subguide could be made to replace the fixed text "XGuide" which appears top left of the EPG grid in Xguide. The fact that the EPG grid is obviously an EPG grid makes the label redundant - hence my idea of replacing it with the name of the selected subguide. The names would be whatever had been programmed by the user via the Xguide plugin setup tab in GBPVR setup.

Re fixed skins in Xrecord.

I'm up for modding all of Xsuite - if you don't mind the work at your end. I've never really used Xrecord in anger, but now I've played around with it via skinning, I can see what a powerful program it is and can understand why it is so popular. It would be a shame to not finish of off the whole of XSuite. I'm sure the work will be useful for future development etc.

Kev

[fla]

The few times I used the yellow button guides I also thought it would be useful to display the name of the currently selected one. A new version is on the wiki with @CurrentGuideName in three skin files. It's a separate parameter from @PluginName but you can always put a single space (text=" ") for any attribute you want to get rid of. XGuide's default blue skin now displays both parameters.

I guess I'll go ahead with XRecord skinning but I'll have to slow the pace down a little for WAF reasons.

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Feel free to proceed at a reduced speed or completely at your convenience. No hurry. I suspect I need a good few weeks to really polish the screens that have been done so far anyway.


I was seeing this hi rez skinning effort as a way of removing all the hard coded values from the XSuite. I will certainly use the Hirez skins (and other meedio users might also) but I cant think of a more thorough way of checking "skin-ability" of XSuite since changing the skin res requires every single item to be moved. I'm sure this will be beneficial in the long run. Soon everyone will have HD TV sets. 480line skins will not be that popular then.


OK will check out the latest version and mod as required.

Have attached the latest modded version.

I think the advanced screen (the last update you made) has a minor issue.

The position of the group of buttons seems to be a function of the number of lines in the menu with the left right arrows. I 'm guessing the row of buttons is not referred to the top left hand side of the popup background.

You'll see what I mean from the attached skin file.

I also cant seem to move the left and right arrow. (It is late here though so maybe I just missed the correct line in the skin)

Kev

[fla]

The advanced screen has "Basic", "More" and "Power" modes each giving an increasing number of parameters to control. The menu buttons flow below the last parameter as if it were one continuous menu. I didn't change the logic in the render function just replaced the hardcoded numbers by skinnable values. I guess I could try to add an attribute like FixedPosition="true" to element AddFutureRecordingPopupBoxButtons to avoid this flowing button feature. Update: Done, look for FixedPosition in fastfind's skin.xml.

Did you try AddFutureRecordingPopupArrows for arrow placement. Note that you need to change the "Element name" locations in the same composite image to match so the buttons are mouse clickable.