Proposed changes for skin v2.0

only slightly offtopic but would it be possible to expose these advanced funtions to python via a low-level xml like interface?

maybe as simple as

Quote:control = xbmcgui.skincontrol('control')
control.set('type', 'image')
control.set('id', '0')
control.set('visible','buttonscroller.hasicon(2)', property = [('effect','fade'),('time',"200")])
window.addcontrol(control)

something along those lines.. i don't care how ugly it is this animation stuff looks great! if you can make the interface hook into the skin xml than it would never need updating

(ceomr @ dec. 13 2005,10:26 Wrote:@ buttonscroller.hasicon(id)

works fine you have to change the id's

so you've actually tested? hmmm odd mine always return true
ty for testing for me

kotix :
ah, havnt done any window id conditionals so i didnt know they behaved that way. perhaps thats something that should get looked at

buttonscroller fixes are in cvs now.

here's the skin info you need:

1. pre v1.8 skins:

these should work fine with your old code. (ie buttons defined in xboxmediacenter.xml just like they are in cvs, and if you want to do conditional textures, either use the "normal" ones (ie the ones in the range 102-120) to have the xbmc home code take care of it, or use the buttonscroller.hasicon(number) to take care of it (numbers are 102 ... 109). the extra images per button are done using the 122-140 and 142-160 id's as before.

2. version 1.8 and above:

buttons are read from the skin. you define the texture focus and no focus in the actual button definition (see online manual info). conditional is buttonscroller.hasfocus(id) where id is the id="" attribute in the <button> block.

tested both and it works fine here (i tested pm2, the orbs, and antiguo 1.3 versions), and a 1.8 version of pm2 that i did.

3. in both cases the context menu support has been removed. this is for a bunch of reasons, namely that the skin can be on a readonly filesystem (cd/dvd) so we can't write to it, and because once you delete a button it's a pain to get it back again (ie not noob proof).

and lastly, if you find any other bugs, please post the xml file you are having trouble with (or an altered pm3 file that shows the issue) so i can quickly get it fixed

i'm available in #xbmc for the next 8 hours or so (till 5am cet or so) if you want to discuss further.

cheers,
jonathan

sweet, jm 2 questions...

1. can you speculate "%" about how far along your alterations are (in terms of total upgrade).

2. will pmii be redone to use these alterations or will it simply be jacked to work as it. (i wonder if it will be redone and added to cvs).

allowhiddenfocus="true" does not appear to behave properly.

target control is hidden and contains allowhiddenfocus=true. when selected the visible variable makes this control visible. navigation behaves as if allowhiddenfocus does nothing

control is as follows...

Quote: <control>
<description>view as icons button</description>
<type>button</type>
<id>2</id>
<posx>50</posx>
<posy>120</posy>
<label>100</label>
<font>font13</font>
<onleft>50</onleft>
<onright>50</onright>
<onup>300</onup>
<ondown>3</ondown>
<visible effect="slide" time="800" allowhiddenfocus="true" startx="80" starty="-117" accleration="1" indelay="1200">!player.hasaudio | player.hasaudio + ![control.hasfocus(50) | control.hasfocus(51) | control.hasfocus(52)]</visible>
</control>

yep, it has to be all lowercase, and also wasn't being read correctly. fix will be in cvs in a couple of hours.

nice one

how many places in the code does it read in the xml data from the file?

i ask this because there are several functions that will return an all lowercase string(array of char) and prevent problems with upper and lower case strings. i added this to my xml engine in the editor along time ago as there were problems with some that have the first letter of each word capitalized and others that are all lower caps. seems like a simple thing but can render your whole control useless because of one letter. just a thought.

1 more question- are these new controls going to be added to online manual or posted when the 2.0 version comes out? need to know so i can update the editor.

no new controls have been created, but yes, i am progressively updating the manual with info on various stuff as i change it.

and we use tinyxml to read the tags. i believe that xml tagnames (and attributes) are case sensitive by spec. as tinyxml does all the xml reading and processing for us, we can't do much about it without actually altering that at the source.

while it would be easy to implement (can do it just in one place as you say), i don't want to implement anything in a nonstandard way.

cheers,
jonathan

in order to make things consistent, i've decided to make all new xml tags and attributes lower case only. i may go and retroactively change other tags, depending on the opinions of the majority.

a quick read of the code indicates that around half (73/140) of the control tags contain upper case characters. this is a fair number (and many of them are widely used such as posx and texturefocus), and i'm not sure whether this exercise is worth it or not. obviously for skinners, a search and replace through multiple files is easy enough, but if you have 73 such search and replaces to do, then it takes a reasonable burden of time.

i can easily add support for both all lower case and the old mixed case stuff with around 13 lines of code, which may be the easiest option long-term. it does slow the code down a bit (an extra function call + search through xml per tag read) though.

i will be changing the startx and starty attributes to startx and starty though in either case. as this has just been added, i don't think it is too much of a burden to the few of you that have used them as yet (just search + replace using a multi-file search and replace tool such as visual studio).

edit: just found a program that can do multiple search and replaces quickly across multiple files. i can set up a data file for it that will auto-convert your skins if you are interested. this will get rid of the time burden, so i think we can move all tags to lower case only for all controls pretty easily.

cheers,
jonathan