MediaPortal II gets opensource xaml skinengine

[frodo]

Some people wondered why we didnt use WPF for our skinengine.
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) , is a new technology from Microsoft for creating really cool GUIs

Although WPF is a wonderfull piece of technology, it also has some major drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is that there is no way to integrate WPF with DirectX and/or DirectShow. Although WPF contains its own internal video player that player is so limited and unusable for an application like MediaPortal. Another drawbacks are the focus/input management and offcourse the fact that its closed source.

That said, WPF still rocks. Skinners get really nice features like vector graphics, linear/gradient/image brushes, panels, storyboards, triggers, animations etc etc etc

So I have started on a new mission:

For MP-II I'm creating my own opensource version of WPF

With our own opensource WPF skinengine we get all the nice stuff from WPF and since its opensource we can perfectly integrate with other technologies like DirectX and DirectShow

Creating an opensource version of WPF is not a light task, but in the last couple of weeks we already came a long way.


Here's a list of whats already done:

Layout engine

* StackPanel
* Canvas
* DockPanel


Animation engine

* Storyboard
* ColorAnimation & ColorAnimationUsingKeyFrames
* DoubleAnimation & DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames
* PointAnimation & PointAnimationUsingKeyFrames
* Trigger
* EventTrigger


Brushes:

* LinearGradientBrush
* RadialGradientBrush
* ImageBrush
* VisualBrush


Visuals:

* Border
* Button
* UIElement
* FrameworkElement

General:

* XamlParser (We use MyXaml here, thx Marc!)
* Resources


For performance reasons we offload as much work as possible to the graphics card. For example the brushes (like the RadialGradientBrush) is fully rendered by the use of vertex/pixel shaders

We also try to make our version as compatible as possible with Microsoft WPF so that if you use Expression blend, or if you have exisiting xaml files they should be very easy to port to MP-II


Note: you can follow the development progress on MP-II (and the skinengine) on our project-management website for MP-II
URL : http://pms.team-mediaportal.com
Username : community
Password : public

Frodo

[frodo]

pingback from : http://www.missingremote.com/index.p...=2417&Itemid=1
pingback from: http://www.theserverside.net/discuss...hread_id=47962
pingback from http://www.meedios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1942

[NielsSF]

Hai Frodo,

I hope you can get the ring (Your WPF) to the end of the story.
Now i will rename you developers Fellowship of the ring.
(okee i have seen LotR yust yesterday)

Now to the point:

although a Skin engine is a good thing to have, it has also a downsite, imho.
One of them is together with custum plugin's is that skin's for the plugin can be fast out-of-date or does not exist at all in your favorite skin.

In the one CMR i have fixed this by adding a simple plugin-skin insite the plugin-directory. This will be used when no real-skin is present in the used skin.
maby this can also be done in MPII.

Goodluke and a very great 2008 to you all

Niels

[frodo]

Well if you look at the project management site and/our sourcecode in SVN
you'll see that we already cover a LOT of WPF.
Sure some classes are still missing or work-in-progress, but at the moment we're already
at the same level as SilverLight (which is a subset of WPF)

Major tasks left todo atm are (data) binding and some basic controls like the listview and treeview

Frodo

[frodo]

For those interested, i've started a blog-entry about this topic which answers some
questions, shows the first results and more...


http://www.team-mediaportal.com/blog...pf_engine.html

[sIRwa2]

im no programmer at all, and im hearing off wpf for the first time, am i correct in that this means a wysiwyg editor to make your own skins? or atleast a tool set to make skinning faster and easier? also for us non-programmers>?

[frodo]

WPF is a new graphics engine from microsoft (see wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...ion_Foundation)

WPF files are called xaml files, since they have the .xaml extension
Most graphic tools today can export to xaml (just like they can export to .svg)

Microsoft own graphic tool is called Expression Blend ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Expression_Blend )

So to answer your question.
Yes you should be able to use wysiwyg editors for skinning

frodo

[bedlam]

Truly great initiative there Frodo. It´s no small task you take on
But If you make it happen you´ll probably become somewhat of a hero in parts of the wpf community! It really is quite a disaster that the interop between directshow and wpf are what they are.

Good luck, looking forward to looking at what will come out of this.
Is any work available on svn yet?
/Simon

[infinityloop]

Originally Posted by bedlam

Is any work available on svn yet?

take a look at the ::blog entry::

[bedlam]

whops, missed that one!
Will take a look at it riight away.. or perhaps later... my son want´s to go out and play in the snow..