Is there a need for a skin editor? (2 Viewers)

[NoBugS]

catavolt: OK, I see what you mean... reversed the order. so next version has that fixed

 

[arion_p]

it supports transparancy... however you have to enter it manually as the first byte (2 hex digits)
so if you want 50% just change the FF at the beginning to 80. after you change it all colors in the color chooser will have 50% transparency.

Well, I knew you can type the transparency in, but I didn't know the color chooser would preserve it.
However I was not talking about the drop down, but rather the advanced color chooser that is a separate window, is that "of the self" too?

can you live with that? or is it to inconvenient?

Since I am a developer not a skinner, I have no problem with that. I just thought a more WYSIWIG way to set the transparency transparency would be welcome. But then again, what do I know, you should really ask skinners - they are your target user group.

 

[DieBagger]

Hi, I just tried your skin editor and must say it's already pretty impressive...

Here are a few things that could make it even better:

• Ability to add other xml files to screen (imported controls)
• Change basic properties of imported controls: for example the "videowindow" in Blue3 basichome.xml can't be selected/moved/resized with the current version.
• Undo/Redo/Save button
• Transparency: Ability to set the transparency with a slider.
• Quick-Format: A few user-predefined combinations of colors/fonts that can be applied to controls (Like the "Format-Painter" in M$-Word)
• Recently opened skins: Show the user the last x skins he edited.

And a few more ideas (probably more difficult to implement):

• xml editor: Like in vs or most of the java gui builders it would be nice to switch between design and xml mode (or maybe even a split screen). I'm sure there are a bunch of open source java xml editors available that you could include in your program.
• Condition Builder: Visual condition builder for fields like "Visible".
• Live Preview: a live preview of the changes so the user can see how the effects (hover, etc.) will look.
• Color Themes: Allow the skin designer to define his own colors (COLOR_TEXT_SELECTED,...) so he can design skins with different color themes. (e.g. SkinXY blueish/SkinXY dark)

Anyways that's all I can think of for now, thx for taking on this huge task! I'm sure this will help making mp even better.

 

[NoBugS]

Thanks for the comments. I had the idea with the xml-editor but was not sure if it would be needed. Seems like its a good idea....
Undo/Redo is pretty tough. Save will be in the next version.

I have to think about a place to store all these great ideas...

 

[DieBagger]

Undo/Redo is pretty tough. Save will be in the next version.

I don't know how familiar you are with design patterns but have a look at the memento pattern. I agree that it's not easy to implement undo/redo but it will get even more difficult later on in the development process .

Memento pattern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Memento pattern in Java : Memento PatternDesign PatternJava
Add an undo/redo function to your Java apps with Swing - JavaWorld

I have to think about a place to store all these great ideas...

Try google code, I can only recommend it since it is clean, fast and you have everything you need for a small open source project (SVN repository, Bug Tracker, Wiki).

 

[NoBugS]

Thanks for the information...

I choose to go with SourceForge. For now I can't make it OpenSource since I use some Non-Open-Source Library. But it is free and will stay free, just not OpenSource.

The main SourceForge web-site is https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpskineditor/.
For new features you could use https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=280162&atid=1188968 and for bugs https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=280162&atid=1188965.

I don't want to stop using this forum, however having all your ideas in a clean way helps me to track them and implement them. So maybe it's too much but it would be great if any feature/bug you want done gets added to SourceForge.

Thanks all for your help and support.

 

[FredP42]

I choose to go with SourceForge. For now I can't make it OpenSource since I use some Non-Open-Source Library. But it is free and will stay free, just not OpenSource.

Good idea to use a web repository, we don't want to loose all this hard work. But I'm little surprised that you cannot make it open source because Sourceforge and all other sites accept only open source projects. What library prevent you to make it open source? Because I'm not sure you are required to give the entire source code.

I don't want to stop using this forum, however having all your ideas in a clean way helps me to track them and implement them. So maybe it's too much but it would be great if any feature/bug you want done gets added to SourceForge.

Thanks all for your help and support.

No YOU this was definitely needed. In fact, I'm still amazed by the work done by the skinners. How patient they are to write all those XML files by hand.
This brings a question: how are you reading and writing the XML did you create a schema? because I tried and I found too many errors (specially on the case) that I gave up.

Thanks again, I can't wait to see the release.

 

[NoBugS]

No xml schema does not work... main issue is that the node 'control' has different children depending upon the value of 'type'. XML schema does not offer support for that.
so I read each node and simply decide what to do with it. I ignore upper/lower-case since I could not find anything about the intended correct spelling.

Back to OpenSource: to create a project in SourceForge you don't have to upload actual source-code. Providing only parts of the code does not make sense since it would not compile/run. Providing all sources is not possible since I use several bought components which allow me to freely distribute the ready product but don't allow me giving other users access to their API (which I would do with the source-code since it contains my private license key).

 

[adskiremote]

Really good fella, works so well. This is just what the community needs. Looking forward to seeing more.

 

[DieBagger]

Back to OpenSource: to create a project in SourceForge you don't have to upload actual source-code. Providing only parts of the code does not make sense since it would not compile/run. Providing all sources is not possible since I use several bought components which allow me to freely distribute the ready product but don't allow me giving other users access to their API (which I would do with the source-code since it contains my private license key).

You could very well publish your own part of the source code and only upload the binaries of the libraries. The licence key would have to be configured in some sort of config file which you'd have to set to "svn-ignore" or "ignore-on-commit". That's the way I did it when I had a similar problem. Of course at the end it's your decision if you want to publish the source or not.

Keep up the good work, much appreciated