How does @visible work?

[mvallevand]

Sub is there a trick to using @visible that I don't remember? I have this line in a skin

Code:

<Text text="@Album" visible="@noImage" location="65,38" size="20,52" font="Album_Default" align="Center" wrap="true"/>

and it displays with if it is not in the hash or if

args["@noImage"]=true;
args["@noImage"]=false;

The Hashtable() seems to be working because if I don't set args["@Album"]= I get the @Album showing on the screen.

Martin

[sub]

At the time the skin goes to draw this element, if has this visible="@noImage" it'll check what @noImage is set to in the properties. If it's true then it is drawn. If it is false then it is not drawn.

Does it not seem to working for you? It could be related to other things going on - like are you using updating this image by changing parameters on UiStatic etc?

[mvallevand]

If looks basically like this. If I don't have the =""; lines the @Artist, @Album text is written

Code:

args = new Hashtable();
                args["@Artist"] = selectedMedia.Artist;
                args["@Album"] = selectedMedia.Album;
                ...
                MusicBox4.GetInstance().playlistDetails.Args = args;
                args = new Hashtable();
                if (selectedMedia.HasArt)
                {
                    args["@AlbumArt"] = selectedMedia.GetAlbumArtImage();
                    args["@Artist"] = "";
                    args["@Album"] = "";
                    args["@noImage"] = false;
                }
                else
                {
                    Image generic = Image.FromFile(SettingsHelper.GetInstance().GetSkinDirectory() + "MusicBox4\\generic.jpg");
                    args["@AlbumArt"] = generic;
                    args["@Artist"] = selectedMedia.Artist;
                    args["@Album"] = selectedMedia.Album;
                    args["@noImage"] = true;
                }
                args["@hash"] = selectedMedia.AlbumName;
                MusicBox4.GetInstance().albumArtScreen.Args = args;

Martin

[mvallevand]

I think I understand my problem, in trying to test this since I found another path to this element. If you add either a true or false arg values it will always be visible, it is true whether you use @something or !@something in the skin I thought I could be more selective in using this but because of the default to true you can't use just the skin to control things.

Martin

[sub]

If I don't have the =""; lines the @Artist, @Album text is written

This is intentional. Otherwise it was too hard for skinners to spot typo's in variable names etc. At least the tags were in their face and easily visible.

[sub]

I think I understand my problem, in trying to test this since I found another path to this element. If you add either a true or false arg values it will always be visible, it is true whether you use @something or !@something in the skin I thought I could be more selective in using this but because of the default to true you can't use just the skin to control things.

I'm not really sure I follow you. If a skinner doesnt want to show something, they can explicitly do a visible="false", or just not list something. If they want to have something that the plugin is controlling the visibility of, then the plugin passes in either true or false in @variable and the skin file has visible="@variable" . This should cover everything we'd need.

[mvallevand]

I think for me logically they should be treated like the DEFINE statement in C and default to false. If the skin had a visible="@defined" this would only be shown up if the plugin had explicitly set args["@defined"]=true. If you want to display the values that aren't set you can still use visible="!@defined"

Martin

[sub]

Rather than a visible="@defined", it's more of a visible="@variableIsTrueOrFalse"

If your skin uses a visible="@variableIsTrueOrFalse", but your plugin doesnt pass in @variableIsTrueOrFalse, or it is spelt differently, then it defaults to being visible, to make it obvious to the skinner.

[mvallevand]

Yes but my comment is both ["@variableIsTrueOrFalse"] and ["!@variableIsTrueOrFalse"] appear to return true if it is null. I think the first one should return false.

Martin

[sub]

Yes but my comment is both ["@variableIsTrueOrFalse"] and ["!@variableIsTrueOrFalse"] appear to return true if it is null. I think the first one should return false.

I understand where you're coming from, but it was a conscious decision to make things visible if the variable was present, since in most cases it'd be because of a typo or bug in the plugin. It'd probably break things to change it too, after having always done it this way in NPVR (and GBPVR before it).