kodi - new look??
#61
(2014-09-12, 00:10)uNiversal Wrote: Yes, but no, the userdata (wiki) copy takes precedence over default, but I dont think it gets updated automatically when kodi updates, so its not viable to wide user consumption and workaround.

Skinning engine and vfs need to improve to point where themes and other extras can be loaded from any directory and changed at default skin level leaving the default skin untouched.

Want wide community support with minimum fuss for maximum gain as easily as possible and extra low maintenance work.

Yes I appreciate that an update to the skin will not take effect if you have copied to userdata (wiki) . But then again you'd probably need to redo your own changes if the skin itelf changes.

It's hard to find a good solution on the current code base. Being able to load stuff from all over your hard drive is IMHO not the solution though.
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#62
So how would you bypass this issue on your OE? ATM you wouldnt unless you do what you suggest. it's messy and I know I tried it already.

On the other hand userdata (wiki) is already used and is required by default skin, so hardly all over the hard drive (nothing changes from how it works now only extends support for these things). In any case the suggestions are that by default the main skin wont move to userdata (wiki) then that it can at least load other info as already does for many portions of skin from there + then new stuff like like themes or weather fanart and backgrounds. Thats all Default skin actually supports as is.

There can not exist a extras installer addon while main skin lives in system path because regular addons cannot write to special addons paths. I have no desire to maintain exact clone skin or make things 100% more complicated either., also Openelec type things wont allow it so and we go back to:

(2014-09-11, 17:58)uNiversal Wrote: I look at alternatives like to ship other themes by default, or a way to dowload such themes that can change how some things look without changing the skin xmls code and therefore stability.

Something you can find @ https://github.com/uNiversaI/revamped.themes as previously mentioned.

However it quickly becomes apparent, some addon to download such themes/extras would be required to make things simpler for users as opposed to make it manual for e,g https://github.com/uNiversaI/confluence....downloader

The problem here is obvious. skin.confluence by default lives in system path and is a special addon. what this means for any possible extras downloader cannot extract the zips to speciall://skin path (which I presume is the correct system path), while it would work in special://home/addons path or as you guys know as userdata (wiki) and then you only need to have the confluence.extras.downloader work.

So here you go, either ship themes by default or allow themes to be downloaded and used, it would also be possible if themes could be loaded from userdata (wiki) while skin the default would still live in system paths.

A great benefit of using skin themes is that has graphic editing/creating experience could create themes without ever touching any xmls.

There are literally hundreds of mb/s of exiting extras that default skin confluence doesn't use (and greatly extends the appeal) like conditional weather fanart all strictly for manual downloading and extracting, which is not novice user friendly.

How to achieve any of the above requires cooperation from other skilled persons, if I could do it, it would be done already. half the work is done, so someone(s) need to go the other 50%

All possible working/non working scenarios have been tested to death, this is what it boils down to. Of course until maybe one day where the source code evolves and skinning engine allows these things for the default skin that dont require manual extraction or rely on making clumsy clones of skin in userdata (wiki)
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