Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings...) (1 Viewer)

[zicoz]

A little bit OT, but since weather-settings are mentioned in the OP of this thread I figgured it's better to ask the quick question here instead of a new thread.

What sources will you be using for the weather plugin that this is connected to?

 

[ajp8164]

A little bit OT, but since weather-settings are mentioned in the OP of this thread I figgured it's better to ask the quick question here instead of a new thread.

What sources will you be using for the weather plugin that this is connected to?

The weather settings MP GUI implementation sets up the MP included weather plugin. This work was completed before the whole weather api situation came up. I'm choosing to leave it all in place until/unless the weather plugin itself either gets fixed or removed.

 

[zicoz]

Ah ok, thank you

 

[ajp8164]

Hi all,

I linked a new build (4/26) in post 3 of this thread. See version log in post 2 for details (tv guide color overrides removed, added skin theme version checking).
I also updated the Avalon3779 skin to work with the new theme version checking.

 

[elliottmc]

Hi all,

I linked a new build (4/26) in post 3 of this thread. See version log in post 2 for details (tv guide color overrides removed, added skin theme version checking).
I also updated the Avalon3779 skin to work with the new theme version checking.

Hi Andy,

I have tested this on my server, and it is looking good. Configuration is logical and intuitive.

There are a couple of issues I found.

1. If I don't copy the section you had in the readme for the last readme, I get the following in MediaPortal.xml

  <section name="genreoptions">
    <entry name="specifympaaratedasmovie">no</entry>
  </section>
  <section name="tvguidecolors">
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbutton">FF0E517B</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbuttonselected">FF008000</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorgroupbutton">FF0E517B</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorgroupbuttonselected">FF008000</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramselected">FF008000</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramended">FF808080</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorborderhighlight">99FFFFFF</entry>
    <entry name="defaultgenre">FF1D355B,FF0E517B</entry>
  </section>

IMO we also need to add

  <section name="genremap">
    <entry name="genrenames">Documentary,Kids,Movie,Music,News,Other,Special,Sports</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary"></entry>
    <entry name="Kids"></entry>
    <entry name="Movie"></entry>
    <entry name="Music"></entry>
    <entry name="News"></entry>
    <entry name="Other"></entry>
    <entry name="Special"></entry>
    <entry name="Sports"></entry>
  </section>

that is the fairly standard genres but without anything mapped to them. (do we need the 'genrenames' entry? it shows up in the config list as a genre in its own right).

The reason for this, is that you can then populate the 'tvguidecolors' section with default colours as well. Otherwise, the default is black.

I still think we need to let the skin designer choose some good default colours, so I am very much in favour of having a list in skinsettings.xml. However, these could be stored as

EPGColor1
EPGColor2

etc, and then have in config an 'import skin colors' button to fetch these. That way, the colours are not tied to particular genres, and it doesn't rely on the user being able to choose colours that match well for on now/on later.

Oh, and once this is set up, I really do think we need to be able to export all of these settings on the server and import them on a client.

Thanks,

Mark

 

[elliottmc]

I've been thinking a little more about importing/exporting settings.

How about keeping this as simple as possible, so that you just have one single 'import' button on the coloured EPG section in config.

Then if you click on it, you can select an xml file, and it will import any relevant settings from this file.

1. If the file contains genreoptions, genremap or tvguidecolors sections, just import them.

2. If the file contains a (new) skintvguidecolors section, then import the colours and map them to the existing genres.

Mark

 

[larsbln]

I'm testing the new features as well and must say that would consider this as stable. The only thing I would change
is to make it easier to start with genre colors. The wiki information seems to be too technical and there is too much code.

If there will be more screenshots and less text I think more ppl will find time to enjoy this fantastic addition to MP.

Some of the information in the wiki are only relevant to skinners.

Personally I like the idea of mark to import XML files. I would call this "color sets".
These color sets could be imported by the user .. that is okay as a first approach for 1.3.0.
Later this could be done by skin installation routines or with the configuration wizard of MP.

 

[elliottmc]

Yeah, the bottom line is that this is stable, but needs a little bit of tweaking to get around the colour selection and multiseat issues.

Oh, and in the UK DVB-T EPG, one of the genres has a comma in it. Not surprisingly this means that this genre is split into two in config. Could you separate genres in the xml with something else that is not likely to be included in a genre name?

 

[larsbln]

Maybe someday there will be a possibility to add complete channels to a genre. Rock TV for example has no genre in EPG but everything that is aired belongs to the music genre.

What I do now is:
update program set genre='Musik' WHERE idchannel=192;

 

[ajp8164]

I have posted a new build, 4/30. Please see change log in post 2.

I re-wrote the wiki topic and organized it into two sections; end-user section, and a skinner oriented section. Perhaps these should be two separate pages?

Mark - "genrenames" is no longer needed in the "genremap" section.

I am still not sure about how to handle skin specific colors. The ideas generated here are worth studying/considering. What ever path we take needs to be able to scale generically for other similar situations. When I first started looking into this in the first design I considered that the user is selecting a skin on the GUI page of the Configuration tool. I was hoping to be able to take advantage of that and set colors accordingly but I ran into a number of technical issues to do with refreshing the UI when the skin is changed. There is no messaging system in the Configuration tool and all of the settings are cached; the only way I could see to make things work was to reload the entire Configuration tool each time the user changes the selected skin = an ugly kludge.