More flexible skinning capabilities

[goosey]

I think that the whole skinning system needs a bit of an overhaul.

I am not sure if this will make it incompatible with the MVP etc, but when you look at all the few skins that have been made, they are either very simple and boring (sorry) or have broken/misaligned fonts/parts.

I refer to the skins in version .227 and have also tried the skins ocean_wave and scan.

I don't fully understand how the skinning works, but it seems that skinmakers are always saying that something doesn't work and they can't sort it out with whats allowed through the core functionality of GBPVR.

I WOULD LIKE to make a skin - but its a bit offputting to know that the only real creativity that can be applied is in the background graphic..... ?

I don't mean to belittle the efforts of all skinmakers, but I believe the skin and skin functionality are critical to the success of these programs.

[sub]

I also recognise that its important to have skins that look nice. I have tried to come up with a skinning system that provides a good level flexibility without spending too much development time that could be better utilized elsewhere in the applications.

Coming up with an infinitely flexible skinning engine could waste weeks my development time, and most of the features will never be used. I would more rather users request *specific* things they would like added or corrected, and I'm sure I can easily accomodate. Remember, this is a part time project so my hours are limited. Many of the users here are happy with the skins and would prefer me to focus my time on stuff like FF/RW of live tv etc.

I think a bigger challange is finding someone with good artistic skills that can help out designing skins. With the current system you can already do a lot of stuff that just isn't being utilized. As an example, the buttons can be made up of a composite set of images, graphic, text etc, with different appearances for selected/normal, yet ever skin so far has just stuck with my existing round rectangle style of button.

So if users have some specific suggestions for changes you'd like, let's hear them...

[goosey]

Oooooh - I didn't realise that you could have images for buttons - which is one thing I was interested in. Does this also apply to the border around the lists - eg the list of comics - can that also be image based borders so that it matches the buttons?

Some of the things I noticed is that - for example in the scan skin - when you have a long menu description it doesn't get aligned properly in the top section. I presumed that was due to inflexibility of GBPVR, but is that maybe a screen resolution issue.

Also in the scan skin (I think) the OSD buttons seems bunched together - maybe another screen resolution issue not tested by the skin-maker?

Would it be appropriate to designate a required resolution for a particular skin? Do different skins for different resolutions?

I also queried the older thread about sub menus which you have answered. I think this will help with the flexibility of the skinning.

I shall give this skinning a crack and then I shall better know what can and can't be done. Would it be wise to make a mockup so that you can say whether or not it could be done?

[goosey]

Ok - I started playing with the "Blue" skin and was looking to change the NetRadio page for example, and could change menu buttons to images etc down the left hand side, but the XML file does not contain definitions for changing the net radio list items?

Am I missing something or is this not possible?

Also, I made a background image that looks really smooth in my image editor (The mighty GIMP) - but looks like crap in the gbpvr interface (whether fullscreen or windowed. Is it being resized? What should the resolution of the image be? I was using 720x480 (copied from your existing sample).

[reven]

yeah there seems to be varying levels of skinability in some features. sub can you make it so in the video/music library you can specify the selected color (for list mode) and non selected color, ie when focus is on the side menu. in radio make it so you can specify the highlighted color on the radio stations, currently it is green. make it so instead of a color specify a image. theres issues are present throughout plugins aswell (sub i know they arent your fault, more the plugins developers).

some of these issues might already be solved, but by looking at the skin files of the mentioned areas they dont appear to be present.

please to anyone developing a plugin, hardcode as little as possible for the UI, eg image locations/size, fonts, colors etc. prime example is the new Music Album, you cant specify the rounded rectangles for the background, only where they start at the top.

[goosey]

It kind of makes it not worth while trying to make nice skins for GBPVR when you cannot expect to be able to achieve a consistent look and feel across all modules/plugins.

I know you say the skinning takes you a long time Sub, but perhaps if more control of the layout was made available to (or the responsibility of) the skin maker you could then let other people worry about nice skins, and concentrate on the coding.

Additionally - writing plugins for skinning should have a little bit of documentation to ensure that plugin makers follow suit. And plugins should fail with an error if a correct skin definition does not work with a plugin....err ...somehow.

Now - if you ask if I have any suggestions as to how to do this? No idea - as you have chosen to keep the core closed source (which is fine - no problem with that), but if I can help in any way I would be more than happy to. I will start with a list of all the things I see as being problems - including issues with plugins that others have created. Will check back here with it when I have compiled the list.

[sub]

Basically I do what I can with the limited time I have available. As I develop new functionality I try to make it as configurable as I can, but it does take much longer to develop stuff where everything is configurable. I basically dont know which things users are going to want to change so would have to make everything configurable. This is not really practical.

I understandard what you are saying but I really need to keep my eye on the ball, and spend my time on things that continue to move the project forward in the right direction. If I spend all my time working on great skins (or skinning engine), things would look great but ultimately we'd be ending up weak in other areas.

If you have specific suggestions (like "I cant change the colour of this text&quot then I'm happy to implement these changes.

[reven]

sub can you implement my suggestions a few posts up. basic things really.
cheers

[sub]

I'll try to implement your suggestions for the next release.

[reven]

would it be possible to add more @tags, like @buttonText for the mainmenu.  like @time, @date, @longdate etc. or make it so "<SpecialElement name="CurrentTime" loc="540,48"/>" can be displayed on the main menu, more option would nice thou, 24hr, seconds, etc.

might be smarter to do it that way instead of making a plugin just for the time.

also in the search menu can you put the drawing of the rounded rects into the skin.xml file ?