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+-- Forum: Development (/forumdisplay.php?fid=32)
+--- Forum: Skin Development (/forumdisplay.php?fid=12)
+--- Thread: XBMC_PC Win32 GUI Development Environment for skinners (skin developers) (/showthread.php?tid=23235)
- raid517 - 2006-12-14 13:02
Hi I know maybe I am going to be chided for saying this but... I have made no secret of the fact that for years I have wished that XBMC would be fully ported to the PC, so this is definitely progress in that direction.
I know some folks will say that for now it's only a development environment - and I know this is true, however one day there will come a time (what with HD disks and new formats etc) when people will have to think about retiring the venerable old Xbox's.
So rather than continue to depend on a proprietary platform (be it the XBox or some other platform) and rather than always having to wait for these platforms to be cracked or whatever, and rather than depending on the somewhat absurd scenario of needing to use an essentially stolen SDK, to build an open source app, it just seems to make sense to think about moving to greener and more much more productive pastures.
All I have ever wanted is a bootable version of XBMC - maybe on a USB stick or whatever (hell I would even pay for that) and I know I would be sorted for life. I would build a small silent mac mini type dedicated XBMC box and stay faithful to the project for as long as the developers were able and willing to support it. (As I have done already over this last several years).
The only barrier to this dream is that there has never previously been an interest on behalf of the development team in doing this - nor indeed is it clear if there is now. The other barrier of course is that what has been built so far is Windows only - so having a small system who's resources are dedicated to running XBMC exclusively seems from this perspective to be as far off as ever. I do not know to what degree XBMC itself is dependent on direct X - but I do know that at least that many of the tools that XBMC uses for music and video decoding almost certainly don't depend on this at all.
I also know that there is an attempt at emulation of XBMC on a PC by another group - but this also does not allow for a truly dedicated XBMC experience (of the kind of direct experience that is possible on the Xbox) and also I know too from my own efforts to try it out that it lacks much of the finesse of the official XBMC teams builds too.
Anyway, bravo for making at least one step in the right direction - no matter how non significant in the wider scheme of things it might still be.
- jmarshall - 2006-12-14 22:33
What is this "other group" you speak of?
- blittan - 2006-12-18 14:10
jmarshall: have you considered implementing a "debug window" which displays the log in realtime (like tail -f on linux) ? or somekind of thing that show python / skin related output (selectable)
That would sure be a killer in this awesome (and I mean it, since it's a huge improvment when developing) port.
Think that is what is missing as of now.
right now, i am using a tail -f xbmc.log which works, but it would be much easier with it built in.
- jmarshall - 2006-12-18 22:25
Good idea. I'll add it to my todo's. Others are free to implement if I don't get time (highly likely!)
Cheers,
Jonathan
- Jezz_X - 2006-12-18 23:18
Am I the only one that the screenshot function in XBMC_pc is currently broken it says it saves the shot and no errors in debug log it just dosn't write the file
- blittan - 2006-12-19 00:45
jmarshall: if i could i would
jezz_x: dont work here either, states in log it is saved (the path exists) but no screenshot .. I know it worked in the earlier builds.
- jgawera - 2006-12-19 10:41
A nice tail utility for windows that I use is BareTail
- Jezz_X - 2006-12-20 23:44
jmarshall can you please fix the screenshot function in this
its killing me not being able to show people stuff
- jmarshall - 2006-12-21 06:06
Remove or comment the:
#define D3DPRESENTFLAG_LOCKABLE_BACKBUFFER 0x0l
at the top of guilib/GraphicContext.cpp and screenshot goodness should come back.
Cheers,
Jonathan
- Jezz_X - 2006-12-21 06:21
Indeed it does
