Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization
Theme Editor Feedback
Bieber:
I'm the GSOC student working on the Theme Editor this Summer, and I'm interested in any feedback, feature requests, etc. the community has about it. There's a wiki page about it with some more info. If you have the Rockbox source tree checked out, you can just "qmake" and "make" the project in /utils/themeeditor, or else get precompiled binaries for Windows/OSX from the link on the wiki page.
AsusFreak:
Hi Bieber,
I've been testing your theme editor already for a while and I'm quite happy with your work til now. Thanks for being so busy with it.
I'm currently working with your latest windows build r27405 and you've done a wonderful job so far.
It's great to open a project and have all important files listed automatically.
Selecting a file leads to the colored code so orientation is made easy.
The code is parsed in the background and errors are shown immediately - great help while coding new lines.
You've done a preview of the skins in the right upper window so the success of adding new code is shown visually - super.
In the right lower window I find the parse tree so I'm able to get more deeper into the parsing functionality.
Really a great job so far. And you've been really fast with your planned implementation !
Now that you're asking for some feedback I would like to give some suggestions as well.
1. You've added touchscreen areas, that's great but if I put them in a viewport like
--- Code: ---%V(161,192,35,47,0)%Vf(CCCCCC)%Vb(000000)
%T(0,0,35,35,play)
--- End code ---
If I take a look at the preview window then the touchscreen area is shown in a viewport %V(0,0,35,35,..) instead of %V(161,192,35,35,...). I think that's no big problem for you and it's the only bug I've seen so far.
2. You've placed the included files in the left window. This is the first orientation which files are important for this project. Then you've placed the source window in the middle and on the right side the preview and the parsing windows. I would like to have a bigger preview window and a smaller file window. I can resize them that's right, but maybe you could swap them (in spite you're right looking at the process: if you go from left to right you see the right order of process steps from opening a file to the parsing results) But for me a bigger preview window for the D2 skins would be great.
3. The parsing window is no big help for me trying to realize a new skin. Especially having errors I currently see no additional use of this output. I write the code with your theme editor and try it with the simulator and with the debugwps option there's the same output. And these information aren't helpful as well in most cases for me. But as a fair comment: I'm able to close the parsing error then it's ok for me (if the saved space could be used for the preview window (see 2.).
So no big issues at the moment. I'm really happy with the theme editor since now. Great job so far - stick with it, I'm really looking forward to your next steps. I saw on the wiki page you will try to implement graphical editing of WPS documents. So I'm really curious about this.
Keep it up, Bieber, you're doing a great job. :)
Bieber:
Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely fix that touch area issue shortly.
As for the layout, I do think that in later releases I'll leave the parse tree hidden by default, and probably make the preview window a little bigger. In the meantime, you can completely rearrange the panels if you want: you can close them with the little 'x' buttons in the corners, and if you want you can grab them by the title window and drag them around, or even tear them off into separate windows. I've also added a timer module recently (I believe this was present in the last Windows build) that you can access from the view menu and dock along the edges of the main window, while we're on the topic of the layout. You can use that to step the preview forward through time, if you like.
AsusFreak:
Thanks for these hints, Bieber.
Dragging the windows is a nice feature but after closing the theme editor and restarting my window configuration does not exist anymore. Shouldn't it be stored in a config file?
EDIT: Sorry, I got two instances of your theme editor opened. Window positions were stored correctly - my fault.
A nice feature could be that the actual viewport regarding the actual line in the code window would be highlighted in another colour in the preview window. This would make it easier to change the viewport limits.
And yes the timer is a nice feature to test the clock depending output of the skin. On the other hand you'll get the question what's in scope of your theme editor and what's the goal of the simulator. My personal view is that a theme editor should be able enter the code, eventually to edit the code on a graphically way and to show parsing errors. The realtime behavior of the skin can be tested with the simulator, I think. So in my opinion it could be sufficient to spend the time on editing and simple previewing features otherwise the simulator will not be needed anymore ;)
So no offence, your hard work gives great results - thank you.
Edit, 15.07.2010:
Thanks for providing r27436, Bieber.
Now the touchscreen areas are working, thank you.
Would it be possible to implement a feature to set conditional viewports?
Maybe you might take a look at my AF_Remote.sbs:
http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?themeid=884&target=cowond2
The structure of a more complex theme like this depends on conditional viewports just to show the right information at the right time. With your editor we're able to see only the static viewports - do you see any possibility here to see them all depending on manually setting the conditional?
Opening and closing the project:
The last build didn't have the close project functionality. Is it right that closing the project only closes the regarding filenames in the project window? I would have expected that closing a project means closing all open files as well but they stay open at the moment and I have to close them manually.
View of the config file:
You changed the view of the config file. The structured view in the past has been dropped for a normal text based view. When I saw your structured view at the first time I was a bit confused but it reminded me that I'm in the config file and had to change parameters and not the skin code so after a while I loved this view. Why did you drop it?
Loading a file lasts a while
The loading of a wps or sbs file lasts a bit in the recent releases. Do you check now the files before loading them? I felt loading was faster in the past. Maybe an hour glass or a progressbar would be nice...
Quit does not work
Could you please check the quit program function - nothing happens when clicking at it.
Rendering sbs
If I click on render sbs and show viewports the ui viewport is shown at the wrong place. In my AF_Satin skin I defined
--- Code: ---# Declaration of UI Viewport
%Vi(-,135,38,170,130,-)
--- End code ---
And this viewport is shown as
--- Code: ---%V(0,0,170,130,-)
--- End code ---
in the preview window.
Album art
If I define album art in my WPS I get a red/white checked rectangle in the preview window but with smaller dimensions than they are in reality. Do I interpret this the wrong way?
Bieber:
--- Quote from: AsusFreak on July 15, 2010, 08:27:22 AM ---Edit, 15.07.2010:
Thanks for providing r27436, Bieber.
Now the touchscreen areas are working, thank you.
Would it be possible to implement a feature to set conditional viewports?
Maybe you might take a look at my AF_Remote.sbs:
http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?themeid=884&target=cowond2
The structure of a more complex theme like this depends on conditional viewports just to show the right information at the right time. With your editor we're able to see only the static viewports - do you see any possibility here to see them all depending on manually setting the conditional?
--- End quote ---
Viewports can be displayed conditionally, you just need to set the appropriate tag values in the device config panel. Is there any specific tag that's giving you problems in conditionals?
--- Quote ---Opening and closing the project:
The last build didn't have the close project functionality. Is it right that closing the project only closes the regarding filenames in the project window? I would have expected that closing a project means closing all open files as well but they stay open at the moment and I have to close them manually.
--- End quote ---
At the moment, no, it doesn't close any open files. I'll change this in the near future.
--- Quote ---View of the config file:
You changed the view of the config file. The structured view in the past has been dropped for a normal text based view. When I saw your structured view at the first time I was a bit confused but it reminded me that I'm in the config file and had to change parameters and not the skin code so after a while I loved this view. Why did you drop it?
--- End quote ---
You can now switch back and forth between the two. If you look at the bottom left of the config file viewer, you'll see two icons. Clicking the icon with the bars will switch you to the old view, and it will stay there as long as you want.
--- Quote ---Loading a file lasts a while
The loading of a wps or sbs file lasts a bit in the recent releases. Do you check now the files before loading them? I felt loading was faster in the past. Maybe an hour glass or a progressbar would be nice...
--- End quote ---
Could you give me your hardware/OS specs? I've never heard of the program hanging on file load, and it shouldn't take long at all. How long of a delay are you experiencing?
--- Quote ---Quit does not work
Could you please check the quit program function - nothing happens when clicking at it.
--- End quote ---
This may be an OS-specific bug: the quit action seems to be working fine for me.
--- Quote ---Rendering sbs
If I click on render sbs and show viewports the ui viewport is shown at the wrong place. In my AF_Satin skin I defined
--- Code: ---# Declaration of UI Viewport
%Vi(-,135,38,170,130,-)
--- End code ---
And this viewport is shown as
--- Code: ---%V(0,0,170,130,-)
--- End code ---
in the preview window.
--- End quote ---
I'll have to look into this, I thought I had the UI viewport displaying correctly.
--- Quote ---Album art
If I define album art in my WPS I get a red/white checked rectangle in the preview window but with smaller dimensions than they are in reality. Do I interpret this the wrong way?
--- End quote ---
There's an option in the device config panel that allows you to change the album art size, so that you can observe how it will scale at different sizes. If you want it to fill the entire area you have allocated for the album art, just set it to a size >= that area.
I would also like to add that if you're compiling from source, you can rearrange the options in the device control panel by editing the file resources/deviceoptions (which is just a text file that defines all the options) and recompiling. If anyone comes up with a configuration that's more convenient than the default layout, please send it along to me and I may replace the default with it.
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