[WIP] New Confluence Skin for XNEWA

[pkscout]

I thought I'd start a new thread for this instead of tacking it to the end of the thread about deep entry points.

I finished a Confluence version of the XNEWA Home screen, and I thought I'd post a couple screen shots for feedback (attached). I've learned more than I ever really wanted to know about skinning (and the Confluence skin in particular), but I think it turned out OK. I used the Confluence blades for the menu, so I gained a fair amount of space on the screen. The only hitch is that the blade defaults to open because XNEWA puts focus on the first menu item. It's not the worst thing in the world, and might actually be better for folks still unfamiliar with the Confluence blades.

Feedback would be nice, just keep in mind that after 10 hours, I'm a little attached to this.

Once I confirm this is a good direction, I'll start working on the other screens.

[mvallevand]

Once I confirm this is a good direction, I'll start working on the other screens.

I think that looks great. The way I had it designed in my mind was to with the sliding menu but I was thinking of having a new screen for the stats and toggle it with upcoming/recent but this approach is probably better. The only change I'd suggest is to move the free space bar to the bottom to allow x-newa to show more than one drive.

Martin

[pkscout]

I'll make that change. I only have one drive on my machine, so it didn't even dawn on me you could show more than one.

Is there a github repo of the current add-on? The only thing I found was from emveepee, and it looks like it's been almost two years since that one has been updated. I was going to fork it so I could make the code changes and then do a pull request when I'm done.

[Graham]

emveepee,

I wonder who on earth that could be ...

[mvallevand]

I started using emveepee in 2006 just after I reg'd here. I put the early stuff on github to safeguard and diff against the original GBPVR xbmc python source from Ton but gave up because it wasn't worth the effort.

Martin

[pkscout]

No worries then. I'll post updates as I have them then. Right now the plan is to get all the screens converted before trying to merge anything in.

I do have a few questions at this point:

1- I'm trying to figure out how I could get the blade to stay closed at initiation, mostly because that's the way Confluence works (in all but a few cases anyway). I tried changing the default control in the skin file, but it doesn't seem to have any affect. Is there somewhere you are programmatically focusing on the TV Guide button? If so, I guess the question is whether we could agree to have default focus on something else (and if we can't, that's fine). If not, then I'll keep digging.

2- This may be related to #1. I noticed when I hit refresh that the blade closes and the first items in What's New and Upcoming Recordings pulse. After that, any navigation action (up, down, left, right) pops open the blade. You can't do anything until the blade pops open and you close it again.

3- I created an Enlgish/strings.po file for the screens so it (a) would be easier to change later, (b) would make it possible to have the addon localized, and © would ensure that any skinning would use a common set of vocabulary. Then my OCD kicked in and I went through all the code and the settings and found all the public strings and added them to strings.po. Would it be OK if I go through the default skin and the code and localized everything? I didn't want to presume and deliver it as fate accompli.

[mvallevand]

1- I'm trying to figure out how I could get the blade to stay closed at initiation, mostly because that's the way Confluence works (in all but a few cases anyway). I tried changing the default control in the skin file, but it doesn't seem to have any affect. Is there somewhere you are programmatically focusing on the TV Guide button? If so, I guess the question is whether we could agree to have default focus on something else (and if we can't, that's fine). If not, then I'll keep digging.

I never found another add-on that had Ton's dashboard idea with the menu, status and list boxes so I don't know what alternates exist if the slider doesn't work. I do set focus to an ID a few place in home.py. The reason for this is that sometimes the remote wouldn't give focus to a control on it's own, I'd need to use a keyboard or mouse. Maybe the slider is more accurate.

2- This may be related to #1. I noticed when I hit refresh that the blade closes and the first items in What's New and Upcoming Recordings pulse. After that, any navigation action (up, down, left, right) pops open the blade. You can't do anything until the blade pops open and you close it again.

On a refresh I do set focus yes.

3- I created an Enlgish/strings.po file for the screens so it (a) would be easier to change later, (b) would make it possible to have the addon localized, and © would ensure that any skinning would use a common set of vocabulary. Then my OCD kicked in and I went through all the code and the settings and found all the public strings and added them to strings.po. Would it be OK if I go through the default skin and the code and localized everything? I didn't want to presume and deliver it as fate accompli.

No problem, if you are doing this as a learning exercise. I might update github if I didn't delete my local repo, so you can create a patch file but for now consider you will be providing the whole tree for the script and I can handle the merge.

Martin

[pkscout]

I'm not going to worry about the focus stuff. It's a really minor annoyance that mostly just tweaks my OCD. No need to update github. I'll jut deliver the addon back to you as a full package.

[pkscout]

OK, here's the first run at the finished product. It uses only Confluence image resources and should be pretty consistent with the Confluence skin. A few things of note:

1- I made a small change to home.py so that if control 999 exists in nextpvr_home.xml the focus will be given to that control rather than the TV Guide control. This allowed me to keep the blade closed at startup. I placed the stuff around a try/except clause, so if 999 doesn't exist, the script will continue to run as normal (so the Default skin isn't affected).

2- I added an additional control (again, error trapped so the script runs as normal without the new control) to pass the percentage of drive space used so that I could use the Confluence progress bar to show the drive space.

3- I found (and fixed) a small bug in epg.py that caused the TIME label not to be hidden before it was populated. I hadn't ever noticed it with the Default skin, probably because the time is in gray and off to the far right. With the Confluence skin, it was really obvious.

4- I didn't include a nextpvr_settings.xml file in the Confluence skin, as I think all of that is superseded by the settings.xml at the root of the resources folder.

5- The addon, settings.xml (but not the nextpvr_settings.xml or settings.py), Default skin, and Confluence skin are all localized now. I've done as much testing as I can here, but I'm not sure how to generate some of the messages in the python files (especially the errors), so there may yet be some errors there. I do know that all the python files run without errors at least.

6- I did make a small change to the default skin's nextpvr_home.xml file (beyond the localization). When I did the localizations, a few words came out different and, in one case, a wee bit longer than the field it was in. So I bumped the width of the CONFLICTS label so it isn't scrolling.

7- I've labeled the addon version as 2.3.0.1 just because that's how I designate beta versions of my other addons (i.e. an extra digit at the end of the currently shipping version).

Feedback appreciated.

[mvallevand]

Ok thanks I will have a solid look over the next few days. I will add a new options to select the new skin option vs. "classic" mode, I will probably make Confluence the default.

A couple of minor points,

- your version numbering scheme doesn't match XBMC's standard http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add..._attribute
- a lot of the old settings stuff isn't used anymore but I've kept it around in case I wanted to add support for a channel group pick list.

Martin