Too many skins, too many options, too many plugins...

[Fatman_do]

Before deciding how you are going to do things, I suggest you clearly delineate what you are going to do.

That is what this whole topic is about. I don't want to give the impression that there is an effort to ram-rod something through, I am completely against that.

There has to be compromises and a solution has to at least appeal to the majority.

If things move in a progression, an evolution if you will, then the impact will be less "shocking".

A xml-to-image swap-out of blue would be a simple first step. It adds the least amount of image overhead and the least amount of complexity. With a "stock" set of images, sub can add new elements without ever having to open a graphics program.

It champions no scheme or method over another. Using baseskin.xml as much as practical is also ideal.

Once these things are in place, more compostional changes can be considered, or left to skinners to add.

Those are my thoughts on it. Baby steps I think is the approach to take.

[McBainUK]

we could have a standard-image-based skin, but what about skins, which want to use more rows in the recordings-screen, than that standard-skin? just as an example....

If it works they way I think it will you could drop in a recordings/skin.xml file which would override the default skin. This together with a new baseskin would change alot of things about the look of gbpvr - aswel as allowing layout/functionality changes.

[McBainUK]

The only short coming is I havnt taken it far enough by making the blue define more common stuff in the baseskin.xml, but I could have if I'd spent a little more time working on the blue skin.

What common stuff are you thinking about? A list type UI element is one of the most commonly used - a few common defeinations of list items of selected heights maybe an idea? Also maybe list background(s) and popup backgrounds.

If these where all in the baseskin.xml you could just reference "ListItemImage" (or whatever) in your plugin and then it would pick it up from the baseskin if not overiden in the plugin's own skin file. This would also encourage standard UI element/image names.

With a "stock" set of images, sub can add new elements without ever having to open a graphics program.

This would also suit me - I'm usless when it comes to images.

[Fatman_do]

we could have a standard-image-based skin, but what about skins, which want to use more rows in the recordings-screen, than that standard-skin? just as an example....

Think of it this way. You right now have to take a 'blue' version of a plugin to skin it (if you were doing sassari from scratch). Half of your work is swapping out the xml for images. If this was already done for you, adding rows in a list or adding your own personal graphical flair is all you need to focus on. The challenges of some plugins (I have issues with xrecord as well) won't be fixed by anything being discussed here.

[dottore]

Think of it this way. You right now have to take a 'blue' version of a plugin to skin it (if you were doing sassari from scratch). Half of your work is swapping out the xml for images. If this was already done for you, adding rows in a list or adding your own personal graphical flair is all you need to focus on. The challenges of some plugins (I have issues with xrecord as well) won't be fixed by anything being discussed here.

that's right.

[McBainUK]

that's right.

which bit? :p

[dottore]

which bit? :p

everything

[Old Dog]

and coming in from left field...

I would like to discuss this standard skin on two levels. First, think of a skin with no graphics. No wisps of smoke in the background, no task images, no buttons, no list panels. Text only.

This is the content layout standard. (maybe we should refer to this as the layout reference?)

If we agree that one of our goals is to allow the end-user to modify the skin on-the-fly, then this nude version of the skin is a configuration the user should be able to achieve.

Add to this standard a means to modify it on-the-fly and at least one set of graphics files and you have a standard skin that could ship with GBPVR.

_______________

I believe our first goal should be to define the layout reference files for the plug-ins (lets ignore the Main Menu for now). BTW, this is not a small task, for example I think we should have a community vote on which skin has the best layout for the TV Guide.

-David

P.S. I strongly suggest that everyone here install Plain Jane and using AM remove all graphics. This way you can (almost) see first hand what a layout reference looks like.

[Old Dog]

BTW, please realize that the standard skins are simply a reference.

For creativity, increase the number of rows, flip the background upside-down, and make the selectors purple. Then you have created your own skin!

[dottore]

sometimes even the core of gbpvr is confusing: there is a details-popup in the live-skin.xml - file in the tvguide folder. that means, the live-guide is displayed using those informations. but: it uses the popup from skin.xml. which leads to following problem: the popup-box is way too big, you can see a quarter of it.

so please consider multi-resolution skins within your standardisation-efforts