Some help re skin mods please

[IAmATeaf]

I've been having a play around with skins and have done simple stuff like moving things around and changing images.

So I started off with ViX_Night_HD and initially put all changes into the same folder which worked fine but then I thought why not separate the changes so I've created a new folder called ViX_NotSoNight_HD and saved my skin.xml and revised files in there. I changed references in the skin to take this into account etc...
The skin is still dependant on files within ViX_HD_Common and ViX_Night_HD but the skin now no longer works.

When I look at /var/log/messages I can see the message "gui" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes but there's nothing else.

Can somebody help to determine what's wrong? Even if I copy the modified skin.xml into ViX_Night_HD the skin no longer loads.

I've got other problems with the skin that I don't understand but I'd like to get back to a working skin in it's own folder before I beg for help with these problems :)

[IAmATeaf]

Not too sure if it's clear in my post above but if I put all the modded files into the folder ViX_Night_HD, edit skin.xml to reflect this and then copy skin.xml into the ViX_Night_HD the skin works.

[IAmATeaf]

I've found a typo in 1 of files, the filename has rp100 when it should be bp100, can't test if that's the issue at the moment as the TV is being used but will report back.

P.S. It does look like I'm talking to myself here with all these posts but it's because i can't edit my previous posts?

[IAmATeaf]

How would I actually debug what the box is doing after a GUI restart i.e when it complains that gui is respawning rapidly? Are there log files I can look at? If so where can I find them?

[judge]

Have you tried enabling debug logs to see if there is any extra detail there?

[IAmATeaf]

Have you tried enabling debug logs to see if there is any extra detail there?

Those were the words of wisdom I was looking, looked at messages and couldn't see anything but enabling debug logs showed that I'd made a typo in one of the windowstyle sections.

The skin now works, I just need to figure out why changing 1 bit of the skin seems to affect others now :)

[Larry-G]

Those were the words of wisdom I was looking, looked at messages and couldn't see anything but enabling debug logs showed that I'd made a typo in one of the windowstyle sections.

The skin now works, I just need to figure out why changing 1 bit of the skin seems to affect others now :)

I wish i could help mate, but those .xml files may as well be in Greek for me. nice to see your progressing though.

[digidude]

I wish i could help mate, but those .xml files may as well be in Greek for me. nice to see your progressing though.

xml is mostly 'tables' in an arranged order, give BASH a look, then python, throw yourself in head first, its what i do, theres loads of tutorials about, the most common ones, for ALL languages, is 'hello world'

i know ill never be up to andys level of expertise, but, in learning for myself, and trying to work out how things work, its mostly things that 'cant be taught' all via trial and error that make people learn more

as i dont actually watch TV myself, it fills the hours :)

[IAmATeaf]

I wish i could help mate, but those .xml files may as well be in Greek for me. nice to see your progressing though.

TBH, I've only made simple noddy type changes. I've added and remove stuff, changed the colour of a few things and I've lightened the skin slightly hence the NotSoNight name. Lightening the skin has caused an unexpected problem in that the setup screens now look a mess which I sort of understand but am struggling to fix.

[IAmATeaf]

xml is mostly 'tables' in an arranged order, give BASH a look, then python, throw yourself in head first, its what i do, theres loads of tutorials about, the most common ones, for ALL languages, is 'hello world'

i know ill never be up to andys level of expertise, but, in learning for myself, and trying to work out how things work, its mostly things that 'cant be taught' all via trial and error that make people learn more

as i dont actually watch TV myself, it fills the hours :)

I've done the "hello world" tuts, the biggest problem for me is not knowing or having a list of all the calls that are available.

[judge]

TBH, I've only made simple noddy type changes. I've added and remove stuff, changed the colour of a few things and I've lightened the skin slightly hence the NotSoNight name. Lightening the skin has caused an unexpected problem in that the setup screens now look a mess which I sort of understand but am struggling to fix.

some of the setup screens are broken in the current build, 584 (& 583 I think), should be fixed in the next update.

[IAmATeaf]

Sorry, I'm back again with more questions. As I said before I've been playing around with the ViX_Night_HD and have some pretty noddy things like re-arrange things, add things and removed things. One thing I've done is make the skin slightly lighter as I personally found the original skins contrast a bit too sharp.

The main problem I've got now is that as I've changed lightened some of the images, I'm getting colours in certain screens which I'm not too sure how to correct or what the best way to correct them is.

I've attached some screen shots to show what I mean.

The first 2 screenies are of the Infobar and ChannelSelection screens which are OK, the 3rd is the EPG screen and I was wondering how or if the program name text could be changed to have a differing colour?

Screenies 4 and 6 show what I mean about the effect of the colour change, you can see that the text area is a different colour to the actual background, the background is also transparent. I want to know what the best way to fix this would be.

Any hints and tips will be greatly appreciated :)

[Larry-G]

Check in the OSD setup section to see what the Transparency settings are set to, the Default should be 255.

[IAmATeaf]

pheonix cheers, have checked that and it is set to 255.

This is going to sound silly but I've worked out that the background colour, as viewed in Photoshop Pro is 20,20,20 but if I set the background colour to #ff141414 then rather than being slightly off the colour turns into almost white. So for that last image I end up with rectangles of white. Doesn't help that as far as Photoshop is concerned I don't really know what I'm doing. :)

Anybody have any ideas, please :)

[sjmc]

excuse my ignorance IAmATeaf,
but how do i get your mod to work, like the small changes by the way

[cooa99]

I noticed that the standard Vix Image does not show channel number as shown in your 1st picture (infobar). please how do I add this to my vu+ solo as well

PS. any idiots an idiots guide to skinning around? as i cant find it it the guides section ..


cheers

cooa99

[Rob van der Does]

Nope, no easy how-to's available. It's a matter of trial and error really: begin with reading skins and making minor changes.

[IAmATeaf]

excuse my ignorance IAmATeaf,
but how do i get your mod to work, like the small changes by the way

Here's an updated version which includes the recent skin changes of ViX 626 and higher, hopefully I've captured all that's required to make it work :)

Unrar the files to your PC and then FTP the 2 folders over to /usr/share/enigma2 on your box. Apart from making it work with the latest version of ViX I've not done anything so it still has the problems with the screens that I mentioned above.

[sjmc]

many thanks for reply but i ftp over to usr/share/enigma and nothing changes
. i must be playing dumb LOL,

ignore , i worked out what i was doing wrong, wont tell you , too embbarrased LOL

cheers again