Custom actions/tags for touchscreen targets

[Biont]

After playing around with touch themes for some time, I find one thing really missing in the skin engine:

The ability to use(/define) custom tags/actions on the WPS. Having a bunch of those would allow for all kinds of cool things like popup menus, maybe different window sizes or even customization of the WPS (i.e. load a different set of images)

My main concern are the popup menus. So far, there are only 2 feasible ways of creating a popup menu and both come with big downsides:

 - Using the %Tl tag, which can only be controlled with a timeout. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no way to assign a specific area in which this tag works. That means the menu would pop up everytime you touch the screen anywhere, which sucks
Also, you can't close it, but have to wait until the timer runs out instead.


 - Drawing the menu when playback is paused. I used this way on my first theme, because you have much more control over when the menu appears and disappears. You can add a close-button (which is nothing more than another play-button ) and then it goes away and playback starts again. The obvious downside is: You have to stop playback, which is very annoying if you're going to the file/playlist browser through that menu, because the selected song only starts playing after closing the menu



If we had some custom actions/tags, this would be no problem at all. They could work like the repmode command and %mm tag.


%Cta|2-4|  defines cta (custom tag a) with 2-4 values to cycle through

%T|...|cta| cycles through the values

%?cta<...>  could then be used for almost anything


I think implementing this would open up lots of possibilities for touchscreen WPS.

As I said: Popup-menus, resizable windows/menus, switching from simple to advanced mode, different image sets (a theme could come in different looks and colors, how awesome is that?) and perhaps alot more I just can't think of right now.


The only problem is - you guessed it - I can't code. That's why I hope that you'll like this idea and that maybe someone feels like coding it.


(sorry for my bad english)

[JdGordon]

wierd.. I thuoght I replied to this ages ago :p

This idea would be pretty simple to implement and most probably would be accepted, it just needs someone to do it.

In fact I did implement this a while ago, but it was rejected because I used the browse button to change the tag's value instead of the touchscreen (which I still think is the correct way to do it on button targets)...

hmm... maybe I'll do this after removing the statusbar...

[Biont]

That would be soo very great .

I can't wait to play around with these tags. They sure would be an essential feature for future touch themes. And they are a perfect match for the idea you posted here (which I really really like):
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=23124.0

[Biont]

Any news on this?

[JdGordon]

nope

[punkt]

I submitted a patch for this: http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/11084
@Biont: I can provide a patched build if you'd like to test the patch. I'd love to hear feedback on this.

[Biont]

You just made me a very happy person

I'd love to try it out, but I think a patched simulator would be of more use for testing and theming. I hope that's not too much hassle.

Man I'm really excited now.

[punkt]

No problem at all! I'll post a patched simulator once I get home from work. You're on Windows, I suppose?

[Biont]

Yep



I had another idea for these tags. It should be possible to do something like this:

%T|...|%vda0|

(%vd as JdGordon suggested it should be called that way)

This button gives the variable 'a' the value 0 instead of cycling through the given values.
If 0 means "off", you could close a popup menu directly although it might have lots of values to cycle through. Also, it would give more control over the behaviour of a theme in general.

[punkt]

Yes, setting the value in addition to toggling sounds like a useful extension. I'd like to use a different name of the touch action than vd, since toggling or setting a variable is conceptionally different from displaying/querying the value with %vd. I currenty use vt for "variable toggle". We could change that to vs for "variable set".

[Biont]

That does make sense, yes. Dunno which one sounds better, though 

[punkt]

Sorry it took so long, here's the simulator: http://www.theess.de/assets/files/buildsim.zip

This includes the updated patch (see FS#11084). Tags are:

Code: [Select]

%vl|identifier|number of states|
%vd'identifier'

Touch-Action is:

Code: [Select]

vs'identifier'[value]

[Biont]

Thank you very much!!

I already spent 3 hours getting used to the tags and writing a new theme and I must say I'm having loads of fun


Another idea: Cycle backwards. It might not be the most important thing there is, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt being able to do it.



I'm currently trying to realize some basic WPS customization from within the WPS. Keeping track of the viewports to display pretty much blows my mind atm, but I hope I'll get it done.

But saving the values in a file so it can be reloaded on the next startup would go too far, right?

EDIT:

This is fun:



3 custom buttons and the "wps menu"


change settings in the menu (currently only button config and screen menu)


and change the behaviour of the 3 custom buttons (each of them can cycle through a set of different functions)

[punkt]

Wow, that's far out!

[Biont]

Those customizable buttons are the main reason I came up with the idea of saving the values in some sort of config file (or the .wps itself, if that's possible)

This patch is already so amazing that I'm having a hard time thinking about basic stuff that might be missing.
All I can come up with are these far-fetched ideas (apart from cycling backwards)

Also nice to have: setting values conditionally and/or being able to have multiple actions in one touch area.

That would be very useful in cases when I'd like to open a new popup while there are others currently active. You'd either need to close them first or cause a big mess So what would be great is something like this:

%?vda<...|%vsb0%vsc0%Vda|...|...>

or

%T|0|0|40|40|vsa1
%T|0|0|40|40|vsb0
%T|0|0|40|40|vsc0

I'm not sure which way would be better and I also don't know if both wouldn't require a huge amount of extra coding (the same for saving the values). I'm just writing down ideas here

EDIT: I am aware that there's no need to go crazy on this patch. It already has loads of potential as it is now