Anime Library - Support Thread

[Ted the Penguin]

Oh, I'm a big fan of using the same conventions as sub's skins if at all possible, so I'm quite anxious to bring things in line with the style he uses as best I'm able.

Spent some time on it last night on the belief that changing to the StandardButtonOrigin as defined in the baseskin would be easy and painless. And, of course, ran straight into an error. (Of course). So, time to get another clarification from sub before I can go any further in that direction.

sounds good, it might have something to do with the skinning library you're using

As for the Screen Name, yeah, that's something I added in for the 1.7 release. I confess I added it only because it seemed like the thing to do, and to conform to the other plugins. I personally could never see the point, it always struck me that it was pretty apparent what plugin I was using, why the necessity for the big label?

But I bit the bullet and added it. (And promptly removed it for my copy!)

lol, honestly, it does not bother me, but in sassari I have that area on the left to fill with stuff, so one of the logical things to put there is the plugin name. I guess it does make some sense for things like the music/picture/video libraries, where they look awfully similar.

I have a few minor skin fixes that I want to send your way (aspect ratio preservation is a pet peeve of mine)... but I will do it when I go through and comment on everything in your skin that I don't exactly understand the reason for.

[Ommina]

sounds good, it might have something to do with the skinning library you're using

You may very well be right, although I kind of hope not. I feel guilty bugging JavaWiz all the time when changes come up, even though he's been nothing short of excellent with responding to additions and making fixes.

I just posted (yet another) message in the dev forum about my StandardOriginButtons confusion, so hopefully I'll have some answers there soon. Ish.

lol, honestly, it does not bother me, but in sassari I have that area on the left to fill with stuff, so one of the logical things to put there is the plugin name. I guess it does make some sense for things like the music/picture/video libraries, where they look awfully similar.

I have a few minor skin fixes that I want to send your way (aspect ratio preservation is a pet peeve of mine)... but I will do it when I go through and comment on everything in your skin that I don't exactly understand the reason for.

/grin -- I admit the ScreenName thing does provide a nice uniform look when moving from menu item to menu item. It does pull the different modules together somewhat. But I still don't like em!

Now as for the aspect ratio thing, I'm not sure I'm likely to change that one. At least, not for the anime picture. The resolutions that are posted are too wildly different for me to provide an (in my eyes) attractive display. It looked worse to me keeping the aspect but having the extra black than it did to abandon keeping the aspect ratio but enduring the smooshed look on some pictures. I did keep the picture as the same aspect ratio as AniDb's suggested ratio, but I'm not sure how closely the latter is followed.

[Ted the Penguin]

You may very well be right, although I kind of hope not. I feel guilty bugging JavaWiz all the time when changes come up, even though he's been nothing short of excellent with responding to additions and making fixes.

unless he says something about you being too needy, my guess is that he just leaves his library as it is, until someone else finds a problem with it (it not like he is sending out code reviews and having testers try to break it )

Now as for the aspect ratio thing, I'm not sure I'm likely to change that one. At least, not for the anime picture. The resolutions that are posted are too wildly different for me to provide an (in my eyes) attractive display. It looked worse to me keeping the aspect but having the extra black than it did to abandon keeping the aspect ratio but enduring the smooshed look on some pictures. I did keep the picture as the same aspect ratio as AniDb's suggested ratio, but I'm not sure how closely the latter is followed.

fine with me, but as I said, stretchy vision hurts my brain. I still have other fixes for you, but I have not compiled them yet.
also, slight correction, you might have set up the aspect ratio properly for a TV, or your monitor, but what about a widescreen TV? remember they all go full screen and act on percentages of the screen.

[JavaWiz]

The WizTools don't look at the baseskin.xml directly. If there is a reference in the plugin's skin.xml to an entry in the baseskin.xml, it should resolve at runtime.

Could you post your skin code and explain what exactly is going wrong, if it is a problem with the WizTools code, I'll see if I can address it.

[Ted the Penguin]

I went through the skin last night, and I got the popups looking a little better (more uniform, slightly better arrangement) I also compiled a list of questions I had about the skins. I just have to make that list for the main skin and then I will post it up here, along with my updated popup skins.

[Ommina]

The WizTools don't look at the baseskin.xml directly. If there is a reference in the plugin's skin.xml to an entry in the baseskin.xml, it should resolve at runtime.

Could you post your skin code and explain what exactly is going wrong, if it is a problem with the WizTools code, I'll see if I can address it.

JavaWiz - I'm going to post the code to this thread about StandardButtonOrigin, since it is that button list that pretty much started this journey of discovery.

Ted The Penguin - You make a good point about the different size screens an the aspect ratio of the image. But I still think it looks yucky with the aspect ratio enforced. Still, I'll concede that my tastes are not necessarily the same as others. The question, to me, becomes one of how to provide the most appealing display to the most people with the least amount of fuss.

I can include both versions, with a batch file or similar to switch between the two, but I don't much like that option since it would be difficult to maintain between upgrades.

I can ask the installer to not overwrite the skin files, but I just can't promise that skin files will not change between versions - I need the freedom to make changes as the plugin moves along. So, hm.

JavaWiz: how does MovieWiz handle the aspect ratio for the movie poster image? And the file captures too, for that matter?

[Ted the Penguin]

ok, my personal preference (and I would hope that of the majority) would be to have the correct aspect ratio for the pictures (it is grossly off with things like dragonball Z), and then let the user just change the single line in the file... or if you REALLY want me to, I can write and compile a perl script for you to parse the file, and change the requisite line.

I am gonna start hacking away at the skinning again (as soon as I get caught up on the forums), so you can expect my verbose post with skin changes to follow shortly


I have showed some of my friends the plugin, and they thought it was awesome. so I just want to thank you again for all the hard work youve done on it. when I started using GB-PVR I wished a plugin existed that could get information from anidb (I think I even posted about it at one point)... you making this plugin (as freaky as it sounds) is a wish come true :p

[Ommina]

Well, let's see. (I don't expect I've got all the examples here, I'm picking plugins that I expect would display a poster of some description.)

AniLibrary (what? It's alphabetical!) -- fixed aspect ratio: false
InternationalCinemaListings -- true
MlPanel -- true
MoveWiz -- true
Nextflix -- true (I'm starting to get discouraged)
SearchWiz -- true

Bah. I'm sensing I'm in the minority here.

Fine, fine. I'll change it to true. But I'm leaving MY copy as false! /grumble

---

Over the next few days (depending how quickly I can work through an unrelated project that has been gnawing at my ankle) I plan to finish up the last of the changes to the 1.7 release of the plugin. I'll let it sit and stew here for two or three weeks afterwards before it goes any further, but I can send you the finalized (no, really!) skins ahead of time if you are interested in working with them.

[Ted the Penguin]

Hey, I am not telling you what you should like the looks of, and if you want all of your posters stretched to fill the area, so be it, its your choice (do you want me to write you that perl script now?)

ok DONE with my looking at stuff (got sidetracked by other stuff ) hopefully my changes are still relevant:


What is with the OSD replacement folder?

Anime Popup:
When voting for anime, close button still selectable.
shouldn't submit be invisible until you vote?
If I make the vote box not transparent, the vote buttons are not kept on top (they disappear )

If the finish date matches the start date (like for a movie) only one date should be displayed (IMHO)

I cant say I really like the variable names youre using for the extended information about episodes (does it come from anidb like that or something?) its kinda difficult to understand what I am editing in the skin.
Maybe @linextitle, @linexcount, @linexwatched, @linexpercent ?

File Popup:
Air date, probably does not need to include the text "AirDate:"

Main Skin:
Are these used?, and what are they?
<Placement name="Tip" loc="21,84" />
<Placement name="AnimeThumbnail" loc="1,65" />

The list background size is basically ignored, it is always drawn the same size as the list (item offset * item count?)
Your skin uses "ListViewListBackground" which is wrong (or at least inconsistent with what sub uses)
the list background is always placed behind the list files, not outside of them. I would really like to place them like this:

<Placement name="ListBackground" loc="23,3"/>
...
<CompositeImage name="ListViewListBackground" size="77,4.5">
<DrawCommonImage name="ListBackground"/>
</CompositeImage>

If this wasn't descriptive enough, I can provide some images with examples

[Ommina]

Hey, that's not Sassari! /grin

Interestingly, I already changed the script I use to copy the plugin files from the development machine to the playback machine to switch the aspect ratio back to false. I live for automation.

So far, I've only looked at the pictures; I'll actually install the skins tomorrow. (It's getting on time that I stopped writing plugins to play anime and, well, actually watch it.)

To answer the immediate concerns, though...

Keeping the 'close' button enabled while voting is "by design", since I didn't really want to effectively turn the voting box in a modal box - if the user wants to close the window without pressing cancel first, who am I to say they shouldn't? I think I agree that the "submit" button should be invisible until a vote is selected though - it might save a bit of confusion in skins where there is not a lot of visual differentiation between an enabled and disabled button.

The voting buttons disappearing: I'm not sure I have any control over the x-axis of the elements. This is one into which I'll have to do some more research.

Totally agree on displaying only one date if finish date matches the start date. Not sure why I didn't think of that one myself.

The label names have no particular meaning, beyond being uniform. "Line 1, Column b", and such. I'll change the "abcd" to something more descriptive.

"Air Date": I'm a bit waffly here. One the one hand, it kind of bothers me to have the date just hanging out without any indication of what it represents. (Although I note I'm not at all bothered by it on the Anime popup!)

On the other hand, I'm also bothered that I'm representing the date as an "air date", when that isn't necessarily what it is. OVAs and movies would have a release date instead. Now, I could display "Air Date" or "Release Date" as appropriate, but I'm mildly concerned that 'release date' will be construed as the date the anime group released the file. I'm going to have to think about this one with some popcorn.

"AnimeThumbnail" has been removed. (It used to display the title image in a little box below the buttons. Was kind of neat, but as soon as it was put onto a TV where you were further than one foot away from the screen, it turned into a colourful blob, too small to be useful.)

"Tip" I use to represent a state change in version 1.7 -- it displays one line for a few seconds then goes away. I have hopes of removing it completely.

I think I see where you are going with the ListView background -- that would be the white panel (in Sassari, looking at Video Library now) behind the list. I'm pretty sure I can achieve that. I'll put it down as a task for tomorrow as well.

A concern, looking at the pictures: presumably there is still enough space for the vote box (I'd guess you've tested that) on the Anime popup. Is the "Message Box" placement in the File popup still able to display four lines of text? The loss of vertical space in the column with moving the date to the top worries me a little.

At any rate, that does me in for the evening. Thanks for the comments!