ready to commit conditional viewports... breaks %P and %pb in current .wps'

[JdGordon]

Hey all,
So, I've got a few patches almost ready to go which affect pretty much every .wps around so I'm putting this warning up to give everyone plenty of time to fix their wps'. The two patches which need your attention is http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9051 and http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9027.
9051 removes the ability to set the lcd x/y margins (i.e %m).
9027 allows you to conditionally display viewports. You should be able to do anything you could with %m with this patch. The big issue with this patch is that it breaks the progressbar tags. %P needs to be removed, so to specify a filename for the progress bar bmp you need to add it to the end of the %pb tag, which means you have to specify all 4 number values also.

I have no intention of committing either of these before they are definitely bug free, and without sending out another warning email, but I'm sending this out now so no one complains that they didn't hear about this change coming.

So, summary of changes:
New tags:
%Vl|<tag>|<regular %V syntax>| - tag is a single a-zA-Z letter (like images...) this tag is used to say that a viewport is conditionally displayed
%Vd|<tag>| - display a viewport (otherwise not shown on the redraw). CAVEAT: you need to enable the viewport before its definition or it wont be drawn...
Removed tags:
%m
%P
Modified tags:
%pb|filename|x|y|width|height|

This is mostly waiting for 9051 to have its bugs removed which I don't think will take too long, but 9027 needs more testing...
I'd like to say these will both go in by the end of June (maybe even devcon weekend..)

So, please test the patches and let me know of bugs (preferably replying to the tracker task)

Thanks

[karashata]

Thanks for the heads-up.  I'll keep an eye out for when all my themes go kaput and make sure I update them accordingly.

Just out of curiosity, is there a way to make the viewports use the foreground and background colours defined in the display settings rather than values specifically written in the WPS code?  If not, would there be a way to add that?  I made a theme set recently that could take advantage of something like that to let the user set his or her own colour scheme rather than predetermined colour schemes.

[JdGordon]

<copy from the mailing lists again>

hey all,
Unless any news bugs popup in FS#9027 I plan on commiting it in 2 weekends time (sometime after june 20th...) This gives everyone plenty of time to fix their WPS's because this patch will break 99% of existing ones
changes:
%P is removed.
%pb is changed to be more consistant with the other tags (explianed below)
%Vl and %Vd introduced.

%pb can either be used without an params (i.e just "%pb") which will put a non bmp horizontal bar at the line position in the current viewport, or it is used like %pb|filename|x|y|width|height| where filename is the name of the bitmap to use (or - for the old style one), x,y are the offsets from the current viewport to position the bar at, width,heioght are the width and height of the bar. (those last 4 can be set with - to use defaults which are explained in the tracker)

%Vl is the same as %V except it requires a single letter as an extra param at the start (e.g %Vl|a|<usual %V params>|) it is used to create a viewport which by default is hidden.
%Vd is used to display a viewport... (%Vda enables the viewports with the letter 'a' as their identifier)

currently there is still a limit of 15 user viewports (+ the default vp) but this number may need to be increased...

One thing to note... if you use the %V (or %Vl) tags at all in a .wps, the default viewport will be parsed and conditionals checked, but it will not draw anything in that viewport (This is a work around for a problem where conditionals clear the line they are on, and because it is in the default viewport it may not be being updated by another one... so you may end up with random blank lines where you dont expect them). IMHO this is not a problem, but if there is really strong feelings against this we can work on a proper solution (if there is one).

Now, I also have FS#9051 ready for commit which removes the %m tag (its not needed ones conditional viewports is enabled), and seen as 9027 breaks 99% of existing WPS' I think its better to commit these together so there is only 1 break to compatibility.... There are others though which think there should be a gap between enabling conditional viewports and removeing %m... I guess its up to whoever yells loudest....

So, please thourghly test these 2 patches and work on your WPS' to make sure they can be converted reasonably easily... and let me know if there are any problems.

I'll be away from the computer untill tuesday night...

Jonathan

[Zardoz]

what does/will your new commit improve?? I'm sorry for asking but what are viewports? I'm a bit dumb so have patience....

[karashata]

Viewports are what allow a person making a WPS to define a certain section of a screen for displaying text or images.  It allows for much more freedom with positioning things on the screen rather than being limited by the height of the text like it used to be.  Conditional viewports will allow different viewports to be defined and used given certain conditions, say for whether or not album art is present to be displayed.  The upcoming commit will also change how progress bars are managed to allow for a little more freedom (to allow multiple different progress bars rather than being limited to one) and to be more consistent with the rest of the code.

At least, that's what I take out of this.  If I'm missing anything important, I'm sure someone else will point it out.

[Zardoz]

OK I think I understand (kinda) now. Thanks for the info. My WPS of choice is Cabbie v3, I guess this will be broken too??

[karashata]

Most likely every currently working WPS will be broken for a short while until people change the progress bar code to match the new syntax.  Other WPSes will need a little more work done, to remove any %m tags being used and use condtitional viewports instead.  I myself am going to have a good hour or two of work to do on my themes to fix them once the commit takes place, but hopefully once that's done I won't have to edit them anymore for a while.

In fact, even the currently bundled themes would be broken, unless they're fixed to the new code syntax along with the commit.  I would expect they'll be updated since they're bundled with Rockbox and it wouldn't make sense to bundle broken themes...

[Zardoz]

Who's the author of that theme? What themes do you author? Thanks for the info dude!!

[karashata]

The theme's author should be on the wiki just under the theme, I think it's the same guy who made the first Cabbie v2 theme...  As for my themes, they're for a different target, but they can be found here.

[Zardoz]

good work. particularly like the 'old school lcd' theme. are you Dutch?

[ZincAlloy]

would be great if somebody could provide simulator builds with those patches so that theme developers can start working on updating their wps files.

should we consider emptying the current wps galleries completely when these patches get committed?

[soap]

should we consider emptying the current wps galleries completely when these patches get committed?

IMHO a coordinated effort should be made to clarify the licenses of all themes on the wiki, and all those which no longer work and do not have a permissive license should be put in a "holding pen".

[jswetzen]

should we consider emptying the current wps galleries completely when these patches get committed?

I have updated almost all of my themes, and I'll have the zips ready for upload as soon as this is committed. If we were to empty the galleries, that would mean a lot more work for me than simply uploading a few files. I agree with soap that it would be better to clean up the galleries, even if emptying them is less time-consuming.

[BdN3504]

Could you commit the changes to the Customwps page please?

[crzyboyster]

I think that the rockbox-themes.org site should become the primary site after this commit (it's the last wps commit for a while now, correct?) and all the wiki pages should be closed down and made view only. Or has this already been discussed?