Die Bahn

[gnomacor]

Note: This theme is experimental. Due to its design constraints, at least the quick settings screen is broken, and system dialogues may be partially invisible. You may want to switch to other base theme whenever you're doing more than scrolling through lists or listening to music.

This is the first theme I wrote from ground up. It's inspired by train information displays, particularly those of the Deutsche Bahn, hence the name. Despite its simple looking aesthetic, I had to push the themeing engine to the limit, and there are several ideas that fell through. I'm happy that it work as well as it does, considering the limitations I'm working with.

The star of the show is the consistent use of relative-ordered list, inspired by train station infos. This is a departure from how the normal Rockbox list operates. There are some idiosyncracies that result from this, such as lower response time and smaller system dialogue. Now Playing screen also has multiple list of upcoming songs with dynamic indicator (that are drawn as an inverted text field rather than a rectangle). I wanted to show more info but it turns out that any next song info other than its position and names are spotty at best, so it's just the title and position for now.

As I said above I'm very happy how nice it ultimately turned out, and that I was able to push Rockbox into doing from what I can tell first of kind stuff. I hope you enjoy this as well and hope it inspires you to adopt this design and also help me & the community on improving how it functions.

UPDATE: Turns out I can just render the whole screen as a list element, which improves the response time. Now the menu screen no longer lags! Also as a side product the system dialogue now occupies nearly the entire screen like it's supposed to, and since the design elements are also in the list, no more vertical stripes interfering. The default font has also changed (just a size bump), to apply which you have to select the theme in the settings again.

[chuck_lardo]

Nice, love it.

Very unique and very cool. 

[gnomacor]

Thank you as well! Your theme has long been an inspiration for me as well as others.

Speaking of, I'd also like to give a shoutout to the wavy theme and its creator Frank Gevaerts/P Poorten, for demonstrating just how far you can push the theming engine, and giving me the confidence that my idea also could be implemented.

[Dook]

Fantastically clever theme. I really like the use of custom menus to have a centered menu selector (brilliant idea!) I can see so much potential in this idea, and I can't wait to see how you develop this over time. The custem menu feature is really, really powerful, I've been exploring it for my next theme for the past 2 years and I've compiled a bunch of my notes that might be of help for you. Keep it up! 

https://d00k.net/wiki/rockbox_advanced/themed_lists_notes/

[Thermoptic]

Amazing theme! Testing it with the simulator here and trying the change the colors. But the color of the text for the track is still blue. Is it possible to change the color of the text here without editing the theme? Just changing the colors in rockbox settings?

[gnomacor]

Thermoptic, due to how it's designed, the colour values in the white section was hardcoded. I have already fixed this issue, and the coming version will be completely themeable. Thanks for your patience

[gnomacor]

A taste of what's coming...

[Thermoptic]

Wow great news. Looks amazing! Thanks for the update

[gnomacor]

After some work, here it is! The next version is V1.5. I think the changes in this version warrants a bigger jump than usual, but not up to version 2 yet.
This version improves customizability, fully embracing rockbox background/foreground colours, and displaying translated strings when available. The repeat indicator & track count display has been redone, and now lives at the bottom. I would love to display the song name alongside it as well but the limitation of the theme engine prevents me from doing it.
Other quality of life improvements include volume indicator, and the song progress bar. The margines are also tweaked to look better.
Hope you enjoy this new version!

[Thermoptic]

Great work! Really like the placement and design of the repeat indicator. And I really love the volume indicator that appears in the top right corner when you change the volume, really nice touch!
Looking forward to the 2.0 release

Edit: Btw is it possible for you to add so we can change the font in the settings in some future update?

[gnomacor]

Customizing the font is a bit more tricky. Because this theme relies a lot on font sizing, it can't apply same fonts universally.

Also hey Dook, sorry for not commenting earlier! Your Adwaita theme was one of the first Rockbox theme I used, and being a GNOME user I enjoyed it immensely. Hope your next project goes along smoothly as well!