Some 320x240 themes seem to have stopped working on recent dev versions

[Frankenpod]

Noticed that some themes of mine (and also the theme "redbox") have started falling back to the failsafe theme, when used with recent dev versions of RB.  Just checked and they still seem to be working on ipods that have older versions of RB on them (e.g. they work with version dated 210409 but not with 221221).  They seem to work with the simulator also.

(Heh, though the fact that nobody else has complained suggests nobody but me uses them)

I might be barking up the wrong tree (tedious to work it out as the themes still work on the simulators - presumably because they use older versions of RB), but as far as I can narrow it down it seems to be any theme that has a bar-chart for the EQ settings in it.

i.e. the problem seems to be with lines like this:
%St(0,0,-,-,image,eqbar.bmp,vertical,setting,eq band 1 gain)
 
Seems as if "eq band 1 gain" is no longer recognised as a valid setting value.

Using "eq peak filter 1" instead doesn't crash the theme, but returns three numbers, the third of which I think is the gain, but it doesn't seem possible to retrieve the gain on its own now.

Has something changed in how these values are named, or perhaps the scope of where they can be accessed?  What does "eq band N gain" need to be changed to for this to work again?

[amachronic]

It likely broke after those EQ settings were removed by this commit. I'll just put the "deprecated" settings back in - that seems like the simplest solution and won't require changing any themes.

[Frankenpod]

If you think that's the best approach, by all means go with it.  (I think all but one of the themes that have the problem are mine, as it happens)

  Can't say I really know anything about the underlying issue (were there previously two ways, internally, of referring to the same variables?).

[Frankenpod]

I don't suppose anyone is motivated to modify RB code so as to allow these themes to work again?

That is, somehow allow the eq band settings to be accessed by the theme engine again?  Even if it means changing the variable names or something, such that the themes would need amending for new syntax?  At the moment it seems those settings are now entirely inaccessible from the theme engine.

Just hoping some dev might be prepared to at least partly undo the change that broke this feature.

[Bilgus]

Did the fix by amachronic not work or did he forget?

[rockbox_dev123]

Did the fix by amachronic not work or did he forget?

https://git.rockbox.org/cgit/rockbox.git/tree/apps/settings_list.c?h=refs/heads/master

A search for "eq band 0 cutoff" returns nothing.

[Frankenpod]

Did the fix by amachronic not work or did he forget?

I just noticed it still doesn't work on the most recent builds.

  I wasn't clear from the reply if amachronic was explicitly saying they would apply a fix or if he was just saying that that would be the way to fix it at some point (if someone was prepared to do it).  I didn't want to press the point too much, as it seems as if I'm the only one who is bothered about the issue!

[rockbox_dev123]

Did the fix by amachronic not work or did he forget?

I just noticed it still doesn't work on the most recent builds.

  I wasn't clear from the reply if amachronic was explicitly saying they would apply a fix or if he was just saying that that would be the way to fix it at some point (if someone was prepared to do it).  I didn't want to press the point too much, as it seems as if I'm the only one who is bothered about the issue!

He's saying it would be the simplest thing to do to just re-add the removed settings options. This doesn't appear to have been done to master because the themes are broken still.

[speachy]

I don't suppose anyone is motivated to modify RB code so as to allow these themes to work again?

I'm not personally in favor of bringing the old settings back; instead the theme engine should be fixed and the theme altered as needed. 

The fundamental issue here is that the EQ settings are a triplet, and that the skin engine doesn't know how to handle this.

I just hacked something together that _should_ do the trick, but it may be the wrong approach (and I don't know if it's possible to do this in a backwards-compatible manner)   To use it the theme will need to be tweaked.  See:

   https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/5532

Be warned:  I can promise that it compiles, but that's the extent of the testing it's received.

[Frankenpod]

Thanks very much.

  Can't say I understand the technicalities of it all (how did it work previously, if the parameters being an array is something the theme engine can't handle?  Did it just work entirely by accident before?).

  Will try modifying some themes to the new syntax - but does this mean I'll need to compile a patched version of RB first?

[Edit] I really struggle to do that - I did have a working development environment running at one point, but then my unix machine had a lot of hardware problems, and when I finally got it working again and tried again I could never again manage to get RB to build successfully, there always seemed to be some glitch or other.

[Bilgus]

Which player do you need us to compile for you iPod classic?

[Frankenpod]

ipod 6g.  Or ipod video, but ideally the former.

[Frankenpod]

I've updated most of the themes affected to use the new syntax, but still not sure how to actually test the new versions.

(Also can't update any already-uploaded themes any more as I managed to get locked out of the email address they are associated with!)

[Frankenpod]

I've tried rewriting the themes, but still can't get them to work with the latest dev version (I gather, from the "patches" page that the required rewrite has been merged?).

  Kind of run out of energy to work on themes any more (too much real life stuff going on), so haven't gotten to the bottom of what the issue is.  On first attempt it seems as if when using the new syntax the EQ settings are all reported as being set to maximum, regardless of what the actual setting is - plus any attempt to refer to the first or last EQ band (0 or 9?) seems to make the theme fall over.
Will look into it some more when find energy/time.

[speachy]

FWIW It's possible that there's an issue with the committed code.

It may help to try this in a simulator build with WPS debugging turned on..