2013-12-29, 02:36
Hi all,
I used my christmas holidays to get my head free from work and decided to write some XBMC addon code that is useful for me. I really have no idea if this type of addon is interesting for someone else but I thought it would be cool to let others participate if they want. So it would be nice for me to hear if such an app is useful for anyone.
Here is my addon:
http://ubuntuone.com/3E8aZWpIUwRozaHkeJ4bvT
Concept:
The idea is to have a common interface to display news or articles from several sites. Primarily, it should really focus on the text and perhaps the main picture of an article. As an additionally bonus, also video and audio appendices should be shown.
The common usecase for me is that I have some minutes in the living room and that I want to read the latest news.
Structure:
The GUIs are derived from xbmcgui.WindowXMLDialog. Different channels and their news/articles are listed. How these channels receive their news items is specified in a "plugin" file for every channel. I think those plugin files (how the websites are parsed) are relatively easy to write so in principle it is easy to extend. However, at the moment the plugins are included in a nonoptimum way --
Status and problems:
I am already quite happy with the addon. Currently, two famous german news sites (tagesschau.de, SPIEGEL ONLINE) are implemented and as I said writing code for new sites is quite easy.
For two problems I couldn't find a solution yet:
- Video and audio playback
Media played using xbmc.Player().play() played in the background. I cannot access it without closing the WindowXML GUI (which is not what I want). I would need something like xbmc.Player().setFocus(), but I don't know if such a thing is possible.
What I currently do is that I define a "videowindow" control in the XML file. The media plays in foreground, but without the default controls. Also, despite what is writting in the wiki on http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Video_Control, setting sizes does not work for me.
- Too large textbox size
This is really not nice: The presentation of the news articles is done via a grouplist object to show image + shorttext and then the long article. The long article is rendered into a textbox. But I have to set the size of the textbox and there is no autosize (for height) function as far as I know. A priori, I don't know how big the textbox will be. So it is either too small and cutting text or too large which is not nice.
Perhaps someone has an idea for my problems?
Thanks and best
Ruediger
I used my christmas holidays to get my head free from work and decided to write some XBMC addon code that is useful for me. I really have no idea if this type of addon is interesting for someone else but I thought it would be cool to let others participate if they want. So it would be nice for me to hear if such an app is useful for anyone.
Here is my addon:
http://ubuntuone.com/3E8aZWpIUwRozaHkeJ4bvT
Concept:
The idea is to have a common interface to display news or articles from several sites. Primarily, it should really focus on the text and perhaps the main picture of an article. As an additionally bonus, also video and audio appendices should be shown.
The common usecase for me is that I have some minutes in the living room and that I want to read the latest news.
Structure:
The GUIs are derived from xbmcgui.WindowXMLDialog. Different channels and their news/articles are listed. How these channels receive their news items is specified in a "plugin" file for every channel. I think those plugin files (how the websites are parsed) are relatively easy to write so in principle it is easy to extend. However, at the moment the plugins are included in a nonoptimum way --
Status and problems:
I am already quite happy with the addon. Currently, two famous german news sites (tagesschau.de, SPIEGEL ONLINE) are implemented and as I said writing code for new sites is quite easy.
For two problems I couldn't find a solution yet:
- Video and audio playback
Media played using xbmc.Player().play() played in the background. I cannot access it without closing the WindowXML GUI (which is not what I want). I would need something like xbmc.Player().setFocus(), but I don't know if such a thing is possible.
What I currently do is that I define a "videowindow" control in the XML file. The media plays in foreground, but without the default controls. Also, despite what is writting in the wiki on http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Video_Control, setting sizes does not work for me.
- Too large textbox size
This is really not nice: The presentation of the news articles is done via a grouplist object to show image + shorttext and then the long article. The long article is rendered into a textbox. But I have to set the size of the textbox and there is no autosize (for height) function as far as I know. A priori, I don't know how big the textbox will be. So it is either too small and cutting text or too large which is not nice.
Perhaps someone has an idea for my problems?
Thanks and best
Ruediger
