[mythtv-users] Merge of OSD and Main themes causes WAF to Plummet

Kevin Kuphal kkuphal at gmail.com
Wed Mar 2 19:40:27 UTC 2011


On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 11:15 AM, Michael Jones
<mythtv at michaelandholly.com>wrote:

>
> As the person who started this diversion.. I feel obliged to jump in
> again..
>
>
> It's pretty obvious to me by the amount of churn here that there is
> something to this issue as it is affecting more than just me. I'm noticing
> a
> few things that are catching my attention.   What's needed are a few
> things:
> ... (and for those poised to jump all over me for tossing out ideas without
> being able to back them up by contributing code... YES, I do understand
> that
> this would take time and effort by the theme builders and/or developers..
> believe me.. I DO, and if possible I'll be happy to help out in some way as
> time permits)
>
> These are purely theoretical ideas for those with an open mind to toss
> around....
>
> 1)  An efficient "novice friendly" way to adjust certain characteristics in
> a theme.  Not a way to fully rewrite or corrupt the theme designer's
> efforts, or the integrity of the theme itself, but a way to make the theme
> more useful on a purely practical level.
>
> I'm no XML or Theme expert.. but spending a couple hours over the last week
> attempting (unsuccessfully I might add) to find a way to adjust the number
> of rows and columns in the Videos Gallery view demonstrates that it's not
> as
> simple as "just open the XML file and make a couple adjustments" to do it.
>
> Barring the creation of a graphical wysiwyg theme editor which is a
> practical improbability.. How about some structure within the theme that
> allows for simple/small adjustments.  This could be as simple as thorough
> commenting the theme XML file(s) to show where things are and are not
> adjustable or as complex as a set of commented, standardized presets in the
> beginning of the XML file that could be "single point of adjustment" to
> affect certain items across the theme.
>

Because, ultimately, it's not that simple and it's not that standard across
themes.  A themer has flexibility to define base fonts as well as inherited
fonts for just about everything on the screen.  How do you suggest that we
account for all those permutation programatically?  You can't just change a
base font to achieve the result because other fonts may inherit from it
and/or override the font size elsewhere in the theme (at least I believe
this is how it works based on my limited understanding of the theme files).
 So how does the software account for all those options?  And spending them
time to build such a "tool" isn't very well served when the same thing is
already possible with a text editor and some basic understanding of how the
themes are constructed.  As someone concerned about how their system looks,
you seem to have a desire to devote at least a modicum of effort into
learning the basics of themes, enough so that you could, within a short
time, be able to change various pieces of your favorite theme to achieve the
result *you* desire.  I have done this with my own system to tweak a few
things I don't like about my current theme.   Not only does this type of
change solve your problem but I would hope that those that go down this path
may someday want to take the additional steps to create their own themes and
contribute them back to the community once they see what can be done with
them.  On the flip side, it probably also has the effect of introducing
those "on the sidelines" of theme development to appreciate how much work it
actually takes to get a theme "just right".


> 2)  A way to adapt a theme for different size screens
> (16:9/4:3/Big/Small/etc)
>

Highly unlikely given the reasons already discussed about this process when
those exact settings were removed in favor of the current configuration.

Kevin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20110302/653808e0/attachment.html 


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list