Help me debug my theme port!

[gbl08ma]

Ok, no worries

[RockBoxFan]

OK, WOW, this is a really bad picture.  Sorry.  It is a snap from my cell phone camera, and is the best I could do quickly.  If you need something better, let me know.

It does show the problem, though.  Notice that the album art, the text, and the icons display just fine, but the background picture has all gone sort of pinkish gray.  (This is the RED version.)

[audio-i]

Yeah it's kind of a bad picture (maybe you could try a screendump like gbl08ma suggested in a similar case, it's also easier  ). It seems though as if the wps background was not loading, presumably because the theme is exceeding the skin RAM usage allowed (I checked the themes on both nano 1G & 2G simulators, and it seemed to be fine though). Could you post now the skin RAM usage you find when the problem occurs, under menu>System>Rockbox Info>Skin RAM Usage?

[RockBoxFan]

Skin RAM Usage is 238KB/273KB

[audio-i]

What I'm getting in the sim is 214/277 working (meaning everything's loaded), I'm not sure what would cause the difference; I found that the images size differ on some versions, e.g. the orange version background is 45.4 KB, while the red's version is 90.8 KB (and something similar happens to the other bitmaps), possibly because they were saved as different BIT bitmaps, but *as far as I know*, Rockbox ends up using equal sizes since it converts the images to the appropriate BIT (both the red and the orange version seem to end up using the same skim RAM on the sims).

If skin ram usage is really the problem, I don't know how much space is needed, but you could start replacing the line below in both the .wps and .sbs files:

Replace

Code: [Select]

%Fl(5,08-Nedore.fnt)

With

Code: [Select]

%Fl(5,08-Nedore.fnt,15)

(that font is only used to display numbers and a couple more characters)

[RockBoxFan]

audio-i,

YOU ARE A GENIUS!

The "RED" theme now works.  The skin RAM usage now reports 273KB/273KB!  What is that trying to tell me?
Post Merge: January 24, 2011, 10:32:21 AMChecking all five:

Blue      - does not work - skin RAM usage: 228KB/273KB
Green   -  **WORKS**   - skin RAM usage: 273KB/273KB
Orange - does not work - skin RAM usage: 228KB/273KB
Red       - **WORKS**    - skin RAM usage: 273KB/273KB
Road     - **WORKS**    - skin RAM usage: 273KB/273KB
Post Merge: January 24, 2011, 11:10:17 AMI added ",100" to each of the %Fl statements in all five photoSkins themes, in both the .sbs and .wps files.

All five themes are displaying perfectly now!

The skin RAM usage is:

Blue   -     262KB/273KB
Green  -   261KB/273KB
Orange -  262KB/273KB
Red    -    262KB/273KB
Road   -   262KB/273KB

[gbl08ma]

Hmmm... I think the difference in the size of the files can be explained: photoSkins-orange backdrop and background were resized with Paint.NET (it was a long time ago, when I used Windows), and the newer ones were resized with GIMP, which features a more advanced BMP compression than Paint.NET (if Paint.NET compresses at all).

I need some theme expert (audio-i is doing a great work) to look at these problems as they are far beyond my knowledge...

[RockBoxFan]

It seems that the different file sizes of the background files does not make a difference, as audio-i explained previously.  The problem appears to be the amount of space taken up by the loaded fonts.  By default, the fonts load with 256 glyphs.  Overriding this to 100 seems to reduce the overhead enough to allow the themes to display properly.  I recommend you add this change to all five themes.

I am not clear on exactly what the numbers reported by "skin RAM usage" mean.

[gbl08ma]

I can't understand why my in iPod, which has only 228KB of memory allocated for theme loading, all the four themes load perfectly however it is loading the whole font glyphs.

For example, photoSkins-road is displaying 207KB/228KB and WPS displays perfectly.

BTW, why is it taking 228KB or 273KB to load on your device while on mine it only takes 207KB?

Have you tried applying cabbiev2 before using photoSkins, to make sure it's not a problem caused by a tag left by the last theme you used (however this never happened to me, nor I think it's possible/probable)?

---After applying audio-i fix (on both WPS and SBS):---

I managed to reduce the memory usage of theme from 207KB to 197KB. Not that I need that memory on my device, but as this seems to fix the problem for some user(s), I'll update the themes this weekend, which is when I have much time free. Also, this way I solve the problem of not displaying audio-i's name on the theme site.

[gbl08ma]

After further applying the reduction of glyphs loaded in certain fonts, RAM usage of all the photoSkins themes was reduced to 189KB (at least it's what it reports on my Nano 2G).

All the photoSkins themes for Nano have been updated on the theme site, and a new port over the theme photoSkins-vinyl, already containing these RAM usage fixes, has been posted along with the updated versions of the other themes. The update of the themes also fixed a problem in their description: I had forgot to add audio-i's name when I updated them last time. It should be fixed now, sorry for anything. The complete license statements, names of authors, background image authors, and other legal stuff are on the theme CFG, SBS and WPS files, at the start of the file.

RockBoxFan, please download the new themes and install them and see if the problem still persists. If yes, then I'm sorry to inform you, but the problem seems to be entirely on your side - on all the simulators and devices where me and audio-i tried the themes, there were no problems. Please check if you're using the official daily build (and not a patched build), specially if it's a custom build with the anti-aliased fonts patch. Also, check if your font files have a normal size; you should try re-downloading the fonts pack.

To everyone: try my (and audio-i's) theme ports, tell us what you think, report any bugs, and if you like the themes, don't forget to rate

[RockBoxFan]

gbl08ma,

All of the themes work fine now, including the new vinyl one, and, by the way, they look terrific!  Thanks for the support and the great themes.