%?cM %?cl tags (VISUAL CLOCK)

[ew]

How about some sort of a compromise.  Allow the time tags to also function as conditionals.  That way, images could be loaded and displayed as conditions.

Yeah....the conditions may look ugly, but that becomes a function of the WPS....


Just an idea for what it is worth.

[raudonkepuraite]

THATS EXACTLY WHAT I'd LIKE!!!
%?cM<%xdaa|%xdab|...blahblahblah...>
Rockbox already uses same thing for custom seekbars, custom volumebars and indication, custom battery indication and so on...
By adding something like this we would be even able to make themes that correspond to time (like changing text color in case its evening or midday to make it more readable), imagine custom clocks in custom statusbars (many people will no longer have to poke their noses into small screens to get the time right), doesnt it make sence at all?

[karashata]

(from an earlier post in this thread...) raudonkepuraite, I don't know exactly where you only get 60 images from, as there are 60 minutes in an hour, and twelve hours around the clock face, so in order to be completely accurate you'd need 12 time 60 (or 720) images (since you can reuse the same images for the time in AM and in PM)... 60 images would at best give you a degree of accuracy of every 12 minutes, which really isn't accurate enough for most people... Even if you only went to a degree of accuracy of every 5 minutes you'd still need 144 images...

(from the most recent post) Yeah, somehow I still don't see any practical ideas coming out of any of this... The status bar is in most cases not very large, so a custom clock using images wouldn't be any better than a simple text-based clock... As for the idea of themes changing colour... Most theme designers pick a colour for their text that makes it most easily readable on whatever background they decide to use, a theme that changes the text colour based on the time of day would be impractical since it would still have to leave the text readable on the background, and you'd have to rewrite all of the viewport code displaying your text for each colour you decided to use (leading to unnecessary bloat, in my opinion...)

[ew]

OK - to display a visual clock with no changes to the current software
- find an audio file that is EXACTLY 12 hours long
- start it up EXACTLY at noon or midnight
- use the track time %pc to display as a large font - in fact forget any additional information on the wps since the player is not useless as anything but a clock.
- for advanced themes, use the progress bar to display against a timeline (sorta like a straight sundial)

Now, for a 24 hour clock, all that is needed is an audio file that is exactly 24 hours long.

(if you don't like my attempt at humor I apologize in advance)

[audio-i]

(from an earlier post in this thread...) raudonkepuraite, I don't know exactly where you only get 60 images from, as there are 60 minutes in an hour, and twelve hours around the clock face, so in order to be completely accurate you'd need 12 time 60 (or 720) images (since you can reuse the same images for the time in AM and in PM)...

Theoretically, using "the magical transparency colour", that could be done with 12 images for the hours, and 60 images for the minutes.

[Chronon]

OK - to display a visual clock with no changes to the current software
snip
(if you don't like my attempt at humor I apologize in advance)

Or just use the clock plugin.   

It seems to me that if you want to render an analog clock in the WPS, then the best way would be to allow for drawing of primitive lines rather than just displaying images in the WPS.

[raudonkepuraite]

OH be more creative! (and btw Rockbox can only use 280 contitions of one tag if ui simulator is right).
THIS GOES FOR ANALOGS (I dont prefer this kind of approach for analog clocks... VISUAL CLOCK doesn't mean analog clock)
Still THERE IS NO NEED TO MAKE THOUSANDS OF IMAGES for them. You make 60 images for the minutes (its really easy as you only need to make a line and then you can just rotate it whatever you want using photoshop or even paint ) and then you make 12 more for outer ring for displaying hours... Or you don't make any at all and just use digits to display hours. There are many ways to make it look right, you can make binary clocks if you want, morse clocks, then you can even make sun clocks (I'm just making some ideas here).

AND ABOUT NORMAL (well i mean digital) clocks

2nded, I've been using one of my rockboxed players as an alarm clock and tried to make a suitable theme,  but having a huge font makes menu navigation nearly impossible. If this was committed, it would fix that problem .

Here is one problem... but of course you are going to suggest multifonts... right? Well yeah its better to reserve additional 60kb for a huge font than use 5kb (in worse case) to make a custom clock? MOST themes aren't using even half image buffer (using like 30kb-50kb assuming that we have sansa fuze in mind). As far as i know that buffer (or whatever it's called) size is constant... right? So we lose nothing here if we use custom clocks.
Text based clocks are small, image based clock would be wonderful solution.

[JdGordon]

have you actually tried using conditionals with the %c tags? any which just return a number should work.

edit: ok, i thought the displayer tried doing number conversions... it doesnt. inore this post

[raudonkepuraite]

Well, thats the problem- no %c tags that should show time can be used as conditionals . Too bad, huh

[JdGordon]

no promises that this works, totally untested...

[karashata]

Theoretically, using "the magical transparency colour", that could be done with 12 images for the hours, and 60 images for the minutes.

The transparency colour doesn't work for drawing images over other images, since the transparency draws the background in place of the transparency colour (so all you'd see would be whichever image you drew overtop of the first one)...

OH be more creative! (and btw Rockbox can only use 280 contitions of one tag if ui simulator is right).
THIS GOES FOR ANALOGS (I dont prefer this kind of approach for analog clocks... VISUAL CLOCK doesn't mean analog clock)
Still THERE IS NO NEED TO MAKE THOUSANDS OF IMAGES for them. You make 60 images for the minutes (its really easy as you only need to make a line and then you can just rotate it whatever you want using photoshop or even paint ) and then you make 12 more for outer ring for displaying hours... Or you don't make any at all and just use digits to display hours. There are many ways to make it look right, you can make binary clocks if you want, morse clocks, then you can even make sun clocks (I'm just making some ideas here).

AND ABOUT NORMAL (well i mean digital) clocks

2nded, I've been using one of my rockboxed players as an alarm clock and tried to make a suitable theme,  but having a huge font makes menu navigation nearly impossible. If this was committed, it would fix that problem .

Here is one problem... but of course you are going to suggest multifonts... right? Well yeah its better to reserve additional 60kb for a huge font than use 5kb (in worse case) to make a custom clock? MOST themes aren't using even half image buffer (using like 30kb-50kb assuming that we have sansa fuze in mind). As far as i know that buffer (or whatever it's called) size is constant... right? So we lose nothing here if we use custom clocks.
Text based clocks are small, image based clock would be wonderful solution.

As I stated above, you can't draw one image over another an have the bottom image still displayed, even with the transparency colour, so you couldn't use your idea for an analog clock...

I hadn't taken into account morse clocks or other styles of visual clocks, but those would likely still have the drawback of taking up a lot of screen space, especially on the smaller screened DAPs... (Plus, those could be pretty confusing for anyone who doesn't understand them...) As for the digital clock, there is JDGordon's patch, wherever it went... It would probably need some work done to it to work with the recent code...

The text based clock is only as small as the font used to display it... Assuming the clock uses the UI font, it should be just as easy to read as the rest of the UI, if it's using the built-in system font it would definitely be hard to read on the larger screened DAPs with their higher DPI ratios... On the smaller screened DAPs with lower DPI ratios the system font is still quite readable...

[raudonkepuraite]

Gee, didn't I write outer ring? Well I meant square. Do you get it now?...  I just don't know how to explain you this, anyway lets leave those analog clocks for a while, ok?
Transparency colour is useless anyway (except when using %x tag, but the image then is "solid"... you cant do anything with it). This is huge problem for themers as well, believe me, it's one of the main problems why rockbox looks so... dev like (actually it looks worse to me ^^)
The problem is that text based clock IS only as small as the font used to display it. So if you want bigger clock you have to use bigger font... BIG FONTS SCREW UP EVERYTHING. Try putting 35px height font on 360x240 or 220x176 screen... veeery readable, isn't it?

edit: BTW, I want to test the patch provided by JdGordon... this might sound stupid, but is is there any possibility that I might brick my player  ?

[audio-i]

Theoretically, using "the magical transparency colour", that could be done with 12 images for the hours, and 60 images for the minutes.

The transparency colour doesn't work for drawing images over other images, since the transparency draws the background in place of the transparency colour (so all you'd see would be whichever image you drew overtop of the first one)...

Have you tried it? In this simple example you'll see what I mean


Background + image 1 + image 2 = final image displayed

[raudonkepuraite]

Theoretically, using "the magical transparency colour", that could be done with 12 images for the hours, and 60 images for the minutes.

The transparency colour doesn't work for drawing images over other images, since the transparency draws the background in place of the transparency colour (so all you'd see would be whichever image you drew overtop of the first one)...

Have you tried it? In this simple example you'll see what I mean http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/11/1754365/test.zip (ipod video)


Background + image 1 + image 2 = final image displayed

  + + =

This wont work with anything that has tags (I had already tried it with custom volumebars and seekbars)

[karashata]

The last time I remember ever trying to draw images over other images (or text over images), the way transparency was handled was to draw the background in place of the transparency colour regardless of whether an image (or text) was overlapping another image. That may have changed since the last time I tried it though...