[AbRASiON]

WARNING Matrix spoilers incoming for those who've not seen it yet.
Title makes it pretty clear. (P.S Sorry - my last suggestion for today guys, promise)

I absoloutely love the "Fanart" view in XBMC, I use it all the time, however it unfortunately pulls the entire plot for most movies, frequently containing spoilers.

Here's an example for The Matrix http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

"A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers"

(That would be perfect)

Instead XBMC has pulled for me this:

"Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality, but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines that live off of the humans' body heat and electrochemical energy and who imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion."

Not only is this spoilerific, it's also really long to read, the short one is much easier.

I don't know how the scraper works in XBMC but I'm wondering if the short one is difficult to pull, due to the fact it doesn't appear to have it's own URL? Unlike this
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/plotsummary/ (full plotsummary URL for Matrix)
Is there any way to force XBMC to only ever have the short summary? It really would be a huge improvement.

(Considering a huge saving of screenspace would be gone, might be possible to list the top 4 cast members in the space instead, which I'd much much prefer too?)

[jmarshall]

The plotoutline is already present in the XBMC database. It's just a skin alteration to use a short one (listitem.plotoutline vs listitem.plot). Not all movies on imdb (not sure if the more important one, themoviedb, has any?) have them, so most skinners use the latter.

You can turn them off completely in some skins.

[AbRASiON]

Is this easy to do? Is there a guide on it?

[AbRASiON]

Anyhone?

[Ned Scott]

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBM...ing_Manual
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBM..._Tutorials

[AbRASiON]

Sorry to bump another one of my threads - I still feel this should be a change to how the stock package works - perhaps when you open the movie for full information (i button) which brings up the "refresh" / "cast" buttons and so on, there it could show the "extended synopsis" but this short plot should be the primary one used in the navigation view. Yes I know other skins do it, but still feel this suggestion is worth considering on the developers forum as an ongoing stock behaviour as an improvement to the package overall

Thanks for your time guys, please consider.

[AbRASiON]

I have now switched to a new skin (Aeon Nox) which appears to be one of the better laid out alternatives, yet it too uses full full plot layouts.
I've hunted and pecked through some files and still can't see a way to drop this down to a plot basic outline only, surely I'm not the only one who would prefer this?

[Hitcher]

Find and replace all occurrences of

Code:

$INFO[ListItem.Plot]

with

Code:

$VAR[Plot]

Add this to the includes.xml

Code:

<variable name="Plot">
    <value condition="!IsEmpty(ListItem.PlotOutline)">$INFO[ListItem.PlotOutline]</value>
    <value condition="!IsEmpty(ListItem.Plot)">$INFO[ListItem.Plot]</value>
    <value>$LOCALIZE[161]</value>
</variable>

XBMC will use the plot outline if it's available, if not then the plot, and if that's not available finally the string 'Unavailable'.

[AbRASiON]

Hey that's very handy, I can probably figure this out - just clarify, which XML file should I be doing that in? (the first two pieces of code)

[Hitcher]

Any you can find them in.

[AbRASiON]

This has now been addressed in the AON KNOX skin by someone here.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1431830

That's probably the final straw for me to switch from the stock confluence skin indefinitely now, thanks to any and all who helped, it's really appreciated.
For the record, I still feel, personally - the /default view/ should be the basic plot and the 'info' view should be the full plot, more often than not the detailed plot is a disaster spoiler fest as I've outlined and the short one is quicker to read / take in and often just enough to pique the interest rather than saturate you with unneccessary complexities.


Here's another one.
The Godfather, basic.

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

vs

The story begins as "Don" Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia "family", oversees his daughter's wedding with his wife Wendy. His beloved son Michael has just come home from the war, but does not intend to become part of his father's business. Through Michael's life the nature of the family business becomes clear. The business of the family is just like the head of the family, kind and benevolent to those who give respect, but given to ruthless violence whenever anything stands against the good of the family. Don Vito lives his life in the way of the old country, but times are changing and some don't want to follow the old ways and look out for community and "family". An up and coming rival of the Corleone family wants to start selling drugs in New York, and needs the Don's influence to further his plan. The clash of the Don's fading old world values and the new ways will demand a terrible price, especially from Michael, all for the sake of the family.

Please, consider.

[cruse]

You could also wait for the next revision of reFocus BIG. We recoded parts of it to be 100% spoilerfree, including episode thumbnails.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=132897

[AbRASiON]

This isn't just a focus on spoilers though, I mean both the Confluence and AON (AEON?) KNOX (NOX?) (lol!) interface are both fine to me, this is about simply making a movie more appealing. I don't want to see a giant hard to read synopsis which takes too long to absorb. These short snippets are just much more convienient AND interesting, it's a win win and frankly, how it /should be/ as default if you're not in the full info view.

[cruse]

For movies I somewhat agree, for TV shows even the outlines are spoilers ("So character X is stll alive in season 3...").

[AbRASiON]

Any thoughts from developers on considering this? It's kind of a big change for confluence - but I feel like it's the right decision to make about the program, spoilers as default is silly. (This no longer personally impacts me, Aeon Nox is the first skin I've found that's better than the default)