What makes a plugin's buttons drawn according to theme?

[Wakalaka]

I have XRecord installed, but its buttons aren't drawn like most other screens. They are drawn according to data in its skin.xml. Is there some commands for an xml that, combined with something like the CommonUIElements.dll, make the buttons get drawn the same as GB-PVR's buttons?

[psycik]

xrecord kind of does things it's own way, and hasn't really followed the rest of the skinning advancements that most of the other plugins have done. AFAIK

[Fatman_do]

Edit those buttons in the skin.xml to match the method in the baseskin.xml that you are attempting to use/create.

If the composite image names are the same as used in baseskin.xml, then you can comment them out and the plugin will use the baseskin.xml definitions.

<!--starts the commenting out, --> closes off the commenting out.

[Wakalaka]

So for any plugin, if there is a baseskin.xml it will be used? xrecord doesn't install a baseskin.xml.

[Fatman_do]

Not quite.

The baseskin.xml file is located in the skin's "root" directory. It acts as a master file that other plugin skins can "fall back" upon to find items it needs that are not found in the plugin's skin.xml file. This makes it handy to define things in one central place to help maintain consistancy.

For example, a common composite image used for selected buttons is:

Code:

<CompositeImage name="SelectedButtonImage" size="150,38">
     <DrawImage filename=".\WhateverFolder\WhateverButtonSelected.png" loc="4,3" size="140,35"/>
     <DrawText text="@buttonText" loc="15,9" size="135,25" textStyle="ButtonText" align="Left"/>            
</CompositeImage>

This is usually included in the baseskin.xml of whatever skin you are using.

If, in a plugin, you see the same <CompositeImage name="SelectedButtonImage" ....,

You can "comment" them out and the plugin will use what is defined in the baseskin.xml file.

You can define textstyles in the baseskin.xml file , and not need to define them in the plugin's skin also.

[Fatman_do]

This is somewhat of an outdated tutorial I wrote on making themes for the Advisor skin.

http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Devel...torial.pdf