Plugins not showing on main menu-please help

[McBainUK]

Having been using GB-PVR for a few weeks I'd thought I'd check out some of the plugins. Tried Music Albums 2, Shutdown and Weather but they all are not showing on the main menu :confused:

Following the wiki I put the dll's into c:\program files\denvnz\gbpvr\plugins

They show up under the plugins tab of the config app but not on the main menu.
And before you say noob, yes they are all ticked to show

Anyone got any ideas?

[jorm]

they are probably underneath exit in the config dialog click on exit and drag it to the bottom.

[reboot]

Did you also put the skin into c:\program files\devnz\gbpvr\skin\insert skin name here.

[McBainUK]

Thanks, didn't realise about the skins :o

[djdafreund]

I'm making the PM3 skin for GBPVR, and working on the Weather portion of skinning now, and sometimes a small change while editing, next time i load it, it no longer shows in the list. What could be causing this? I've had to restart changing the xml file 4 times all over because of this, and don't know what exactly causes this, so i can be more carefull of this in the future. Thanx for the help you give me on this. It works fine at first, then after a change, it all of the sudden stops showing when running GBPVR. Then when i copy ther original file over, overidding the modified one, it shows again. Is GBPVR just very picky on xml files having to be very correct, else it auto-removes it to correct other further more serious crashes?

Needing to know this so i can adjust my method's from this point, if that is the reason. Thanks again. All help to me is very much appreciated and respected, so i can improve on my methods, and knowledge.

[reboot]

XML files must be exact, or they don't show.
Syntax is ultimate. There is no room for error, and sometimes gbpvr won't start at all, if there's an XML error in the wrong place.

Whenever editing, make small changes, and test them, before moving on to the next change.

[djdafreund]

Would it be possible to change GBPVR to be just slightly relaxed? What i mean is, if your making a skin, and your having a button not anywhere close to the bottom, or sides, and your needing just a few pixels more adjustment, GBPVR no longer loads because of this slight change. I don't consider this an error by all means. Just a slight adjustment.
So as of now, a lot of excess time is spent having to constantly re-do artwork itself just to keep things lined up, since GBPVR won't allow but perfect positions. I don't mean that in any disrespect, it's just that i have done a bit of skinning with other software and with multiple platforms, and have not ever ran into anything of this sort where it's this touchy with dimensions, and co-ordinances. So this is just strange to me of course. If this is just that way it has to be, i can understand that position, just hoping it's not. It would save alot of stress and extra time for the skinners if it is possible to change a little bit.

[sub]

The microsoft libraries we use wouldnt load any of the xml file if it is any part of it is invalid, but I'm not sure this is what we're talking about here.

Having a coordinate too large or too small would not stop GB-PVR loading. Having garbage in a field might. For example, if we're expecting a number and you have letters or spaces or other characters then it'll probably cause problems.

When it doesnt load for you, post the GBPVR.exe.log so I can see the type of error your talking about.

Would it be possible to change GBPVR to be just slightly relaxed?

To be quite honest, probably not. It would take a lot of work to check every XML fields for garbage values, and gracefully handle it. There is not one specific place that would need to be changed. We'd likely need to change many places in the application, and in my opinion its probably just not worth the effort.

[dottore]

while skinning it can happen, that the plugin you are skinning doesn't show up. quite a normal thing. before searching in the xml and changing random things you should check the gbpvr.exe.log - file. if it is a skin-error you will find something like unnamed colors or undefined fonts then you know, where the error is.

gbpvr being more relaxed will mean having unconform xml-files, which isn't a good idea.

[djdafreund]

Maybe something is just buggy on my machine then. Here's an example below of what i'm talking about-

<SpecialElements>
<SpecialElement name="Buttons" loc="66,172" spacing="32" alwayCentered="false" maxVisibleButtons="6" allowTopBottomWrap="false" showNumbers="false"/>

Now, when i tried to have loc="65 [or below],172" GBPVR wouldn't load anymore. Task Manager would show it's running, but nothing on screen. And once i change the value back up to "66,172", and run GBPVR, it runs and shows display just fine.
The messed up part it, today i tried 65, and it didn't work (like mentioned,no display, like it's not running) but then tried 63, and it worked and tried it down to 32 even, and worked still just fine. So (very baffled here) i went and plugged in value 65 again (now that a lower number seemed to work), and now 65 value, it loads and shows the display(/program/skin/whatever) now, whereas it didn't before. And with that being the ONLY value i even touched, and changed, is there possible some other thing causing this? This is what i've had a problem trying to skin because of. Like, maybe the problem i mentioned a couple posts up (what i was better explaining in this post) isn't/shouldn't be causing this as Sub mentioned, but rather something is getting stuck, and GBPVR isn't properly loading. Once time it didn't work, and another time it worked fine using same exact value.

Hope this helps better describe my bugs going on. Thanx for any answers/help.