Panels?

[Old Dog]

Would someone please explain panels to me.

• Are they plugins?
  
• Are they dlls?
  
• Do they showup on the menu settings in config?
  
• Can they simply be dropped into any skin.xml?
  
• I know that some can be used on the main menu, does the code for main menu need to know anything about the panel or can a brand new panel just be added to it?
  
• Who renders them?
  
• VA Panel seems to be popular, where can I read about it?
  
• What obvious question am I not asking?
  

[Jeff]

Panels are dlls that implement the IInfoPanel interface. They do not show up in the config app, although you can make them do so by also implenting the plug-in interface in the panel and only shpwing yourself when in the config app but not in the main gbpvr program. They are configured through their own skin files in the panels subdirectory of the skin folder but also display if configured to do so in the main menu skin file. Their render method is called by gbpvr when it is displaying the main menu. There is no documentation for the VA Panel, but I can tell you whatever you;d like to know about it. The main thing it does is implement a queue of messages that any app can add to (see the weather plug-in for an example). it then rotates through each message on the queue and displays it for a set period of time. You can extend the VA Panel through panel widgets, which allow these plug-ins to the panel to have config screens of their own. There is an example at http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/uploads/Developm...Widget.zip

So far there are stand-alone panel widgets to display stock quotes and current music track information, weather via the weather plug-in, and upcoming recordings, conflicting recordings, and low disk space warnings via the video archive plug-in.

Jeff

[Old Dog]

Thanks Jeff. I'll need time to absorb this...

[Old Dog]

If any app can post messages to VAPanel, is there a way to filter which messages are actually displayed?

[Old Dog]

I think I got it.

[reven]

off topic, but nice skin.

[Old Dog]

off topic, but nice skin.

I call it reven for now. Guess why?

[Old Dog]

Panels are dlls that implement the IInfoPanel interface. They do not show up in the config app, although you can make them do so by also implenting the plug-in interface in the panel and only shpwing yourself when in the config app but not in the main gbpvr program. They are configured through their own skin files in the panels subdirectory of the skin folder but also display if configured to do so in the main menu skin file. Their render method is called by gbpvr when it is displaying the main menu. There is no documentation for the VA Panel, but I can tell you whatever you;d like to know about it. The main thing it does is implement a queue of messages that any app can add to (see the weather plug-in for an example). it then rotates through each message on the queue and displays it for a set period of time. You can extend the VA Panel through panel widgets, which allow these plug-ins to the panel to have config screens of their own. There is an example at http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/uploads/Developm...Widget.zip

So far there are stand-alone panel widgets to display stock quotes and current music track information, weather via the weather plug-in, and upcoming recordings, conflicting recordings, and low disk space warnings via the video archive plug-in.

Jeff

Is there a way to use more than one VAPanel on the Main Menu?

[Jeff]

No. What are you trying yto do? While you can't have more than one VAPanl, you can write additional panels that use the same underlying message queue to display messages. As an example, I wrote a second panel called AlarmPanel that just shows the higest 2 priority levels of messages (which today are only used for low disk space warnings) and otherwise shows nothing. The source of the example is at http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/uploads/Developm...mPanel.zip.

Jeff

[Old Dog]

Thats fantastic! You've got everything covered!

Thanks Jeff.

-David