Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings...) (4 Viewers)

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi Mark

Thanks for pointing this out. I corrected my words to reflect on you're thoughts.

But delivering a new feature (that doesn't brake anything else off course) to 50% of the users are a pretty good thing to me.

It would be better so have all people using this, but if the EPG coloring is held back because of all signal providers genre mapping issues, there is no way to have this done.

I am sure there is a way to have this done. That is why I have been making suggestions.

You say it is better to deliver a feature that 50% of the users will be happy with (I admit that I am paraphrasing you here). I think that it is bad to deliver a feature that 50% of the users will be unhappy with.

If someone likes a feature then they will just use it. If they hate it, they will rant and rage and tell everyone how bad it is.

I guess there are as many different genres as there are providers. And some providers are changing these data often.

My personal thought on this is let people handle the genre mapping and if the provider has bad data provisioning, so be it.

Mine provider has poor data and therefor i use XMLTV data. People can use a provider with consistent data if there are issues.

If genres can be read from TVDB and used for mapping to coloring genres then i think that is the solution.

If all genres from all providers needs to be mapped it is a dead end.

Lets focus on the feature itself and if there are any errors in the code done...

But the users will not see this as a problem with the data. They will see it as a problem with MediaPortal.

That's why I want to take a little time to work out how best to implement this.

Of course I am not in change, so everything I say is personal opinions and suggestions.

Mark

 

[JacobJust]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi Mark

I Can follow you here but i still need to say that getting a feature for 50% of the MP users is good.

I also Think users Can see the problem themself if the carrier are delivering the data.

If wheather data were showing wrong degrees or terrible forecasts i wouldnt blame MP, but the data provider.

I do not rant IPTV or DVB/T or ViewModeSwitcher or Radio because i dont use these features.

But i would really dislike a feature i think i need that doesent work or crashes - if a feature is there and i dont like what it does i simply do not use it.

Lets just hope EPG coloring gets a good start with nothing crashing or not working as it should. (i really like this)

I guess it could be better in the future versions but now it works well for me.

Thanks for youre opinion...

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi all,

Love the passionate debate ;-) Great software built by great - and passionate people!

I am thankful to you all for help in making these new features better - I really do enjoy working with the MediaPortal team... if only my day job was as fun and interesting

If genres can be read from TVDB and used for mapping to coloring genres then i think that is the solution.

Indeed genres can be read from the TVDB and in the current/latest revision *they are*. The "unmapped" genres list (see the configuration tool) lists the genres in the TVDB that are not mapped to any "MP" genre. Recall that the "MP" genres are simply genre names that *I made up* (a sane person only needs approx. 5-7 genres; anything more makes the guide look like a rainbow = unreadable).

After reading through all the ideas and giving it some think time I have to agree that the best long term solution will be to have each MP genre associated with a list of search terms which can be used to determine which TVDB genres best match. For instance; if the MP genre is "Sports" then the list of search terms might include "sport, tennis, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, racing" etc. The list of search terms will be matched with the TVDB genre names using a logical OR on a case-less sub-string basis. The list of search terms will be stored in MediaPortal.xml and editable via the configuration tool. There will have to be a list of search terms for each language and the language used would have to be whatever language MediaPortal is currently set to (in MP settings). For best results we'll need to seed the list of search terms (for each language) best we can.

If we can agree on this kind of solution I can whip up the implementation fairly quickly as it's just extending the current implementation.

for everyone's help and support!

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

After reading through all the ideas and giving it some think time I have to agree that the best long term solution will be to have each MP genre associated with a list of search terms which can be used to determine which TVDB genres best match. For instance; if the MP genre is "Sports" then the list of search terms might include "sport, tennis, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, racing" etc. The list of search terms will be matched with the TVDB genre names using a logical OR on a case-less sub-string basis. The list of search terms will be stored in MediaPortal.xml and editable via the configuration tool. There will have to be a list of search terms for each language and the language used would have to be whatever language MediaPortal is currently set to (in MP settings). For best results we'll need to seed the list of search terms (for each language) best we can.

Hi Andy,

I think this sounds great.

We only need a limited number of genres. I don't know what the exact limit should be, but if someone wanted 20 genres, I would suggest that they would forget which colour applied to which, so it would not be helpful. Hopefully by applying sensible limits, it can be kept easy to configure. Sure, some people will argue that they want more choices, but that's life.

Mark

 

[larsbln]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

ajp8164

Could you please give a short answere to this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...eather-settings-103616/index7.html#post835211

I think this could be a solution for more than 12 different genre colors.

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

@ajp8164

Could you please give a short answere to this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...eather-settings-103616/index7.html#post835211

I think this could be a solution for more than 12 different genre colors.

But why would you actually want more than 12 different genre colours? The whole point of genre colouring is to make it clear at a glance what type of program it is. As soon as you go to a large number of genres, you'll never remember which colour applies to which genre, and in a typical view you could have every program a different colour.

With regard to having solid colours, or just borders, I would guess this is quite easy to implement as a choice, but won't affect the overall planning of this feature.

Mark

 

[larsbln]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

But why would you actually want more than 12 different genre colours? The whole point of genre colouring is to make it clear at a glance what type of program it is. As soon as you go to a large number of genres, you'll never remember which colour applies to which genre, and in a typical view you could have every program a different colour.

With regard to having solid colours, or just borders, I would guess this is quite easy to implement as a choice, but won't affect the overall planning of this feature.

Mark

I never said that I want more than 12 genre colors and I agree that it's not a good idea at all. Just to be prepared for most different configurations and special needs I just suggested that (from a media designer PoV) a small border or triangle would allow more colors without losing the clearness if you dont mind.

 

[robyf]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

After reading through all the ideas and giving it some think time I have to agree that the best long term solution will be to have each MP genre associated with a list of search terms which can be used to determine which TVDB genres best match. For instance; if the MP genre is "Sports" then the list of search terms might include "sport, tennis, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, racing" etc. The list of search terms will be matched with the TVDB genre names using a logical OR on a case-less sub-string basis. The list of search terms will be stored in MediaPortal.xml and editable via the configuration tool. There will have to be a list of search terms for each language and the language used would have to be whatever language MediaPortal is currently set to (in MP settings). For best results we'll need to seed the list of search terms (for each language) best we can.

I agree with this, if this can then be modified by the user.

By the way with last version I still have the problem of mediaportal taking longer to start and displaying caching at every start.

Thanks

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

By the way with last version I still have the problem of mediaportal taking longer to start and displaying caching at every start.

I know. It's on my list ;-)

for keeping me honest..

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

@ajp8164

Could you please give a short answere to this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...eather-settings-103616/index7.html#post835211

I think this could be a solution for more than 12 different genre colors.

I'll need to relook at the texture blending operation that provides for the genre coloring (done in MP's FontEngine) to see if this can be done with the current implementation. If not, I'll be reluctant to change the FontEngine for 1.3 - the entire MP GUI depends on the FontEngine working well.