Skin Editing Tool Alpha 0.2 - NOT SAFE TO USE YET (1 Viewer)

[Alltaken]

Hi guys,

I figured that the MP skin creators could do with a helping hand with editing tools.

The Following tool will help editing skins. It is coded to provide drop down menus and pre-configured values (animation lists built in etc...) it is not a WYSIWYG editor.

Installing the required tools

XMLmind

You will need to download and install the personal edition of XMLmind, To quote their website:

Personal Edition is free of charge, but comes with a license which restricts it to non-commercial use.

XMLmind XML Editor: Personal Edition

It is a relatively easy to use editing program for XML files which has been heavily designed to edit doc-books, but is great to edit any XML file with a Schema

Configuring XMLmind for Media Portal

Once XMLmind is installed, copy media-portal.xxe into the following directory:

C:\Program Files\XMLmind_XML_Editor\addon\config\media-portal\

Setting up XML files to be recognised by XMLmind

The first element of every file will need to be updated for XMLmind to recognise it as a mediaportal file. This is done by adding a namespace definition to the theme.

A find and replace on all theme documents in software like notepad++ or WinGrep will sort this out.

BEFORE

 <window>

AFTER

<window xmlns="https://www.team-mediaportal.com/mp-1">

You should now be able to open and edit the documents in XML mind to their full potential.

Due to the structure of the theme XML files. When making changes the View will not update automatically. To update the display press "Ctrl+L"

Advantages of this editing method:

• Its very low tech, and should be relatively simple to maintain as the software develops.
• It lets designers worry about their intentions, rather than getting things spelt correctly in a text editor.
• It gives drop down menus, that make it very difficult to do something wrong.
• It can be programmed to give some visual feedback.

Disadvantages of this editing method:

• Current XML files will need to be Re-ordered in a more strict structure. E.G. in the fonts file. Name must be first, Filename must be second, Height must be third...
• Its not a Wysiwyg, you will still need to have an understanding of the file structure.
• It may require that a few XML attributes/element names be made lower case by the developers.... But I'll try to get around it before asking anyone.

Feedback:

• Please reply with feedback, good or bad.
• Tell me things that you wish could be different, i may not have the skills to fix them but i'll certainly give it a go.
• Tell me things that bug you.

 

[explodedk]

seems nice... definetly gonna try it out...

 

[shade01]

Hey this is very cool, hopefully things like this can gain momentum and be built upon.

By the way, thats a cool example of what you can do with the font xml, what does it look like when trying to edit things like basichome?

 

[explodedk]

hey alltaken. i tried that out... i copied your string of code, and put it in a new xml document called fonts.xml on my desktop... i get the errormsg shown in the attachment.

what am i doing wrong mate.

 

[explodedk]

okay i found out what was wrong. in your code there was missing something. i post the code for others..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="http://mp.mudpuddle.co.nz/team-mediaportal-fonts.css"?>

<fonts xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mp.mudpuddle.co.nz/team-mediaportal.xsd"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

  <font>
    <!-- Note that the order of the following elements is critical to the correct validation of the file.  
The inclusion of Bold and Italic even if Empty will make this file display more correctly.-->
    <name>Blank</name>
    <filename>Arial</filename>
    <height>20</height>
    <bold></bold>
    <italic></italic>
    <start>0</start>
    <end>255</end>
  </font>
[B]</fonts>[/B]

 

[Exterminator]

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="http://mp.mudpuddle.co.nz/team-mediaportal-fonts.css"?>

<fonts xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mp.mudpuddle.co.nz/team-mediaportal.xsd"

Hey explodedk is there really a reference to mudpuddle, I am nearly p*****g myself reading this, please do not take offence, I know there was a reasonable rock band around a while ago called Puddle Of Mudd. Maybe I have had too many stubbies, love your skin .

 

[explodedk]

hey exterminator. the mud puddle aint my work. it was started by alltaken, i just updated the code since he forgot one tinny line which makes all the difference

for the props on the skin..

 

[Alltaken]

okay I found out what was wrong. in your code there was missing something. I post the code for others..

Cool cheers for pointing that out. Fixed.

By the way, that's a cool example of what you can do with the font xml, what does it look like when trying to edit things like basichome?

I've done Fonts, and Translations (simple lists of repetitive things) but the windows file is a far more interesting challenge as it contains so many different elements as well as the fact that controls are allowed to contain other controls to make groups of controls....

Because XML Schemas are rigid in their order. I've got most elements in and working, but don't have them organised logically yet. This will be done shortly. I will need some serious guinea pigs to test that I have not left out any valid options (themes are not entirely documented), and don't have options available that don't exist.

Hey explodedk is there really a reference to mudpuddle, I am nearly p*****g myself reading this, please do not take offence, I know there was a reasonable rock band around a while ago called Puddle Of Mudd. Maybe I have had too many stubbies, love your skin .

Ha ha, well as a teenager I bought the domain name. and since then I've never managed to change it. Maybe one of these days...

I am hoping that the proof of concept and development will be made official by the dev's and transferred over to the team-media-portal website in some way. Having 3rd party web references in the long term is not so professional, but it is very handy for development.

 

[Alltaken]

Hi Guys,

Just working my way through these controls..... so many options (its not simple is it)

I am pretty close though, and was wondering if the XML parser being used is case sensitive. I have seen different files in the skin use colordiffuse and colorDiffuse.

Following on from that, is it just some elements which can handle both case options, or is it all? If it is all, then I will choose a coding style and stick to it everywhere rather than having a mixture.

Up to about 900 lines of code and haven't even finished creating the file definition, as I haven't catalogued all possible control options.

 

[pilehave]

Hi Guys,

Just working my way through these controls..... so many options (its not simple is it)

I am pretty close though, and was wondering if the XML parser being used is case sensitive. I have seen different files in the skin use colordiffuse and colorDiffuse.

Following on from that, is it just some elements which can handle both case options, or is it all? If it is all, then I will choose a coding style and stick to it everywhere rather than having a mixture.

Up to about 900 lines of code and haven't even finished creating the file definition, as I haven't catalogued all possible control options.

I have not yet met an element that was case-sensitive, but prefer them to be lower-case if I have a choice