[mythtv-theming] New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite

[Robert McNamara]

Hi all,

Don't know how many have been following the status updates over the
past few months, but I think I finally have Graphite into a releasable
state.  Not *everything* is as it will be when .22 is out, but it's
certainly good enough for people to use it and to finally put to bed
the notion that trunk has no usable themes available.  I'll quickly
highlight some of the gotchas and some of the limitations, as well as
some of the features.

MythUI is the first theme that (hopefully!) has themed all current
MythUI converted screens.  I have also themed a few pending features
(such as my own patches to add TV Show support to MythVideo, export to
MythVideo, and the MythGame MythUI conversion patch).  I have tried to
focus on showing off some of the new features such as
Fanart/Banner/Coverart support in MythVideo and "Watch Recordings."
Graphite randomizes all menu backgrounds between a few primary color
backdrops, but you can add your own randomized background directory by
symlinking images/backgrounds/ in the theme folder to a folder
containing backgrounds of your choice.

Things *you* will need to do:

To have Graphite look anything like my examples, you will need to
download fanart.  This means using the tmdb.pl grabber script for
movies and (if you have my TV Episode support patches installed)
ttvdb.py for TV.  My patch for TV episode support will automatically
download fanart/covers in a format compatible with finding them in
"Watch Recordings."  In case you don't have those patches installed,
here's how you can see fun fanart in "Watch Recordings":

Set up fanart and coverart directories in
Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->General.
Download fanart and coverart into their appropriate directories using
any of the following naming schemes:

    Show Name.png (or jpg or gif)
    Show_Name.png
    Show-Name.png
    Show.Name.png
    (any of the above plus) Season #.png
    (any of the above plus) s##e##.png

Pretty much anything you can think of, the hunt should find.  Note
that the naming must exactly match the title naming of the recording.
So "Battlestar Galactica (2003) Season 1.png" will lose, but
"Battlestar Galactica Season 1.png" will win.

Use this naming convention for both fanart and coverart.  I've spoken
with someone about getting a perl script out to automatically pull in
fanart, coverart, and banners for upcoming and recent recordings,
which could be cron'ed to make this all automatic.  Hopefully we'll
see something like that soon, and my aim is to get it all done by the
backend for .23.

In MythVideo, you can get fanart/coverart by simply downloading
metadata with tmdb.pl.  Note that with current trunk, this may involve
reseting the metadata on the film first.  I have a patch that
addresses this that should hopefully go in someday soon.

Use the GL painter!!  You *must* do this, as the qt painter breaks the
theme badly.  Actually, it's my use of negative coordinates that
causes the issue, but the GL painter is more tolerant of this, and
until there's a way for it to work in the qt painter, you *need* to
use to GL painter.  You'd also be missing tons of the eye candy
without it anyway.

"Hey!  'x' Isn't themed!"

Yes, I know.  Anything that hasn't gotten a MythUI conversion is
unthemed.  There are also two things I don't intend to theme.  These
are:  MythZoneMinder and the MythVideo Video Manager.  I'm not setting
up MythZoneMinder (and it hasn't been MythUI'd anyway) and the Video
Manager is no longer necessary in trunk (since you can scan videos
from all MythVideo views) and I'm hoping to see it disappear.

And now, a favor...

Please don't report bugs with the theme to me yet.  This is a
"release," but it's not a RELEASE.  There are many things that are
currently placeholders for widgets that are still to come, and many
things where I just haven't figured out what my final design will be
yet either.  Notably, this includes the menu.  I'm not sure what I'm
doing with it yet so for now it's just something serviceable.

OK, have you read all of the above?  It's really important, and the
theme won't work right for you if you didn't...

http://www.fecitfacta.com/graphite.tar.gz

Enjoy!  Positive comments are appreciated, negative comments to /dev/null!  :)

Robert