one common skin ?

[reven]

ok what are the plugin developers (and sub, we wouldnt leave you out) thoughts on the common skin issue?

ill implement this first in my pictures, but i want to get a few ground rules laid out first (does that sentence make sense?)

1) where will it be? skin\blue\root or skin\blue\skin.xml or skin\blue\standard or skin\blue\global or something else?
2) what should go in there?
normalbuttonimage
selectedbuttonimage
err thats all i can think of now
3)do we really need this? (since i can only think of two things to put in there)

backgrounds should be kept out of this, since you want specific backgrounds for each plugins. and you cant put fonts in there, since composite images need fonts in the same skin file (maybe in the future there could be global fonts, or would that just complicate things?)

ok thats it for now, what you think?

[sub]

1) where will it be? skin\blue\root or skin\blue\skin.xml or skin\blue\standard or skin\blue\global or something else?

I'm also not sure if its required or not, but if it was, I'd probably go with skin\blue\skin.xml

[reboot]

Yup, good choice.
Skin developers would then standardize in skin\skinname\skin.xml

[dottore]

there can go many things there: lists, icons, big icons and so one....those elements are needed in many plugins. popups can go there. and i think, even the background should be placed there, since the only thing which is changing, is the plugin-name. so if someone wants to have custom backgrounds on every plugin, this can be overwritten in the skin-file of the plugin.

[reven]

lists, icons, big icons and so on

these are constant enough, so i dont think they should go in there. like sub uses different settings for video lib and music lib and i use different settings for my vids etc and jeff uses different for video arch. so i dont think they should be placed in the common skin.

popups probably can go in there. theres just an issue of format. like most of my popups i use are either a "ok" and "cancel" type or justa single button "ok", sub mostly uses the 3-4 buttons on the left hand side of the popup box with "watch" "exit" "record" "quick record".

the backgrounds shouldnt be placed there, since i personally use a custom background for every plugin (eg an image with the text "my pictures" for my pictures etc). and checking to see if its override is just annoying.

still wondering if we really need this.

[Jeff]

For some common dialogs (error display, yes/no dialog) I have placed these in the Common Dialogs sub directory (e.g. skin\Blue\Common Dialogs). These dialogs are generated by the commongbpvrutilies.dll library and an be used by any plug-ins. So far they are used in the video archive. music player, and weather plug-ins.

Jeff

[reboot]

still wondering if we really need this

No, we don't need this, but it does make it easier for skin designers, and newbies that want to get into skinning.
We do need a standardized set of "this goes here, this does not" though.