Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Theming and Appearance Customization => Topic started by: JustJohnny on January 19, 2007, 02:47:19 AM

Title: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: JustJohnny on January 19, 2007, 02:47:19 AM
I've created my first theme for ROCKbox. I have a 1st gen. Nano, so that is the original target device. I've started modifying it for use on other devices.

The theme is available on the  iRiver H1x0 & iPod 4G Grey WPS gallery (http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WpsIriverH100) pages of the wiki.

Please try out the theme and let me know what you think.  I'm particularly interested in testing the progress bar and volume icons.

Does the progress bar fill the outline at the end of a song? I was having some difficulties while testing this with the uisimulator.

The inspiration for the theme is the Rockbox logo. Comments are appreciated.

(http://www.horning.us/Members/Roan/docs/rockbock/wps/ROCKboxed_screenshots/15)
ROCKboxed, version 1.0
Icons along bottom: volume, shuffle, repeat shuffle, play, hold, and battery level.

Other screenshots (http://www.horning.us/Members/Roan/docs/rockbock/wps/ROCKboxed_screenshots/) can be found on my personal website.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: Peter200lx on January 20, 2007, 12:51:43 PM
Did you mean for the theme to start out inverted? I personally think it looks better with it being normal instead of inverted.

Other then that, It's a nice and simple theme for getting the information across. I would personally like to have a next song line, but that's just me. It might make this theme too packed. All in all, it's a nice theme.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 20, 2007, 01:34:48 PM
Did you mean for the theme to start out inverted?
Yes, I put the invert command in the configuration file, but the version of the uisimulator software I used apparently doesn't handle that setting. I just didn't take it out, but will do so.  Could you take a picture of your iRiver using the theme as it is and post it/send it to me, so I can see what it looks like inverted. It would be a great help.

Quote
I would personally like to have a next song line, but that's just me. It might make this theme too packed.
Yes, I didn't want the screen to feel to packed/cluttered.  Once I've redesigned the current version of the theme for all the various Rockbox supported devices, I will come back and try some tweaks. Please feel free to implement and post revisions.

Thanks for the compliments, and taking the time to load and review this theme.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: Peter200lx on January 20, 2007, 02:34:36 PM
Well, the screen dumps don't capture the inversion. I have some dumps I made and then inverted to that it's like what is was. The screen dumps has a blue as the background, although that's only what it looks like with the background. The screen dumps I'm showing were converted to 160x128x1.
This is the default look
(http://200lx.olsonnetwork.com/dump%20070120-110524.png)(http://200lx.olsonnetwork.com/dump%20070120-110542.png)
Switched the inversion section
(http://200lx.olsonnetwork.com/dump%20070120-110631.png)(http://200lx.olsonnetwork.com/dump%20070120-110653.png)
As dumpedConverted to two bit color

I believe that the inverting of the screen is a special feature that is just part of the actual LCD driver chip. That is why it wasn't showing up on the simulator. *This from what I understand, I could be wrong
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 20, 2007, 03:21:04 PM
Thanks Peter200lx!! Inversion is definitely not what I wanted.  I have changed the config. file to set inversion to off, repackaged the theme, and uploaded the new version it to the wiki.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 25, 2007, 12:49:20 AM
nice work -- I've switched to it, after using Marquee for maybe 6 months or so. The only problem with Marquee was that scroll didn't pause.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 25, 2007, 09:11:32 AM
nice work -- I've switched to it, after using Marquee for maybe 6 months or so. The only problem with Marquee was that scroll didn't pause.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it.  ;D

I'm not sure what controls the scroll. I used code from the example in the manual.  While using the uisimulator, I occasionally run into title's of songs or albums which continually scroll across the screen, but I haven't figured out what triggers that behavior. Usually it scrolls right to left, pauses, then scrolls left to right.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: bascule on January 25, 2007, 10:02:15 AM
nice work -- I've switched to it, after using Marquee for maybe 6 months or so. The only problem with Marquee was that scroll didn't pause.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.  ;D

I'm not sure what controls the scroll. I used code from the example in the manual.  While using the uisimulator, I occasionally run into title's of songs or albums which continually scroll across the screen, but I haven't figured out what triggers that behavior. Usually it scrolls right to left, pauses, then scrolls left to right.

Scrolling is user-configuable (as explained in the manual...) (http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-h100/rockbox-buildch7.html#x10-960007.3)
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 26, 2007, 12:46:13 AM
Thanks for the tip -- I've been playing with it, but can't come up with a reproducible example of what I was seeing. To be clear, it was that bidirectional scrolling had no pause, but rather reversed instantly.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: Peter200lx on January 27, 2007, 05:05:22 PM
Hi, I did some more testing of the theme and wanted to offer a few more suggestions. You have your code return "Artist?" for when there isn't data for the Artist information and such:
Code: [Select]
%al %s%ac%?ia<%ia|Artist?>%ar
%al %s%ac%?id<%id|Album?>%ar
%al %s%ac%?it<%it|Title?>%ar

One cool idea I've found is that you can have it give the file name and directory names when the meta data information isn't available:
Code: [Select]
%s%ac%?ia<%ia|.. %?d2<%d2|%?d1<(Root)|>>>
%s%ac%?id<%id|. %?d1<%d1|(Root)>>%?iy< (%iy)|>
%s%ac%?it<%?in<%in. |>%it|%fm>
I don't claim credit for the logic of that system, I grabbed it from another wps (http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WpsArchos#JensArnold) that I had used back on the Archos. I just took that section and then changed a bit here and there for what I wanted. There might be some messed up logic in it. But it works great for what I need.

If you look at This page (http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CustomWPS), these are the tools that is being used by the codebock:
Code: [Select]
%fm File Name
%fn File Name (without extension)
%d1 First directory from end of file path.
%d2 Second directory from end of file path.
%d3 Third directory from end of file path.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 28, 2007, 09:00:03 AM
Thanks Peter! I'll give them a try.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 28, 2007, 03:53:45 PM
There seems to be something funny about the battery display -- should it be all black or all white when the battery is full? I've seen both. It starts out all black, then it turns all white at some point within the next hour or so. When the battery is genuinely low, I get the all black with a hash mark on the left that you show in your screenshot.

Still my favorite theme, it's quite readable.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 29, 2007, 12:09:45 AM
Hi stinkingpig,

I'm glad you like the theme!

Battery states:
Full = all white
Low = hash marks on left
Unknown state = all black (battery outline)

While testing this on with the uisimulator software, occasionally the battery would disappear at different levels. Have you run into this?



Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 29, 2007, 11:45:50 AM
that makes more sense. I've propped it against my laptop to watch more closely, and the battery is full.

It boots up with the battery all black. Stays that way through a song change. Now it's been 10 minutes and it's still all black.  Shutdown and restart, it's still all black.

I've been keeping up with nightlies and this is now 1-28-07. I don't see anything in the changelog about battery detection on the IHP-120, and other themes are showing a full battery... Still, now I'm wondering about that unknown state... do other themes use it?

How about using a black battery for full, hash the whole thing for low, and use white for unknown? Can a pixmap question mark be put in for unknown? Is a separate icon necessary for "All Full"?

thanks for your efforts,
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 29, 2007, 12:07:25 PM
... Still, now I'm wondering about that unknown state... do other themes use it?
Haven't looked through other themes for its use. Just tried to follow the manual's example for battery states.

Quote
How about using a black battery for full, hash the whole thing for low, and use white for unknown? Can a pixmap question mark be put in for unknown? Is a separate icon necessary for "All Full"?
Hmm, at the very least I'm going to have to come up with a more definitive icon for the unknown state. I will try out your suggestions, look at some other themes, and see if I can come up with something less confusing.

Thanks for helping out. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 30, 2007, 01:52:07 PM
Switched back and forth between Bold and ROCKboxed yesterday, and I think I've figured it out. It's doing black when the battery is full, white when the battery is anything below full and above dangerously-low, and hash on the left for dangerously low.

I looked through the wps file and it looks like that trick with reusing n.bmp is what's not working quite right. I modified n.bmp to put some stripes across it and that worked, then I put it back to blank. With all the back and forth I'd run the battery down a few pegs, and the battery display is now working properly. I'll charge it back up and see what happens.

The big issue is probably the "unknown" state, which I think is actually used for "charging" or "completely full" -- it's confusing that it goes from all black to all white. I'm modifying bt.bmp to be all white, and I may do bn.bmp too after I see how bt goes.

On a side note, they just removed Chicago 12 from the dailies, you should switch to Nimbus 12 in themes\ROCKboxed.cfg.


Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 30, 2007, 06:18:51 PM
Switched back and forth between Bold and ROCKboxed yesterday, and I think I've figured it out. It's doing black when the battery is full, white when the battery is anything below full and above dangerously-low, and hash on the left for dangerously low....

Thanks for taking some much time figuring this out!! Please send me your changes when you are happy everything is working correctly.

Quote
On a side note, they just removed Chicago 12 from the dailies, you should switch to Nimbus 12 in themes\ROCKboxed.cfg.
Yes, I happened to be in the #rockbox irc channel this morning and found out.  I'm starting to change over now. Unfortunately there is a slight size/spacing difference, which means the progress bar outline y coordinate needs tweaked for just about every device. I may just update the zip files to include Chicago until I have a chance to switch to Nimbus.



Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: Llorean on January 30, 2007, 10:02:15 PM
Chicago was removed because it's actually a copyrighted font. If you add them into the .zips on the wiki, that would mean we'd have to start removing those .zips from the wiki.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: stinkingpig on January 31, 2007, 12:33:40 AM
http://felix.monkeynoodle.org/tmp/ROCKboxedsp.zip

I'm not getting it to overwrite the backdrop, this is the first edit I've tried and the documentation doesn't seem to describe what the examples I'm trying to follow are doing... Anyway, let me know what you think.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 31, 2007, 09:22:17 AM
Chicago was removed because it's actually a copyrighted font. If you add them into the .zips on the wiki, that would mean we'd have to start removing those .zips from the wiki.
Hi Llorean: I was wondering about Chicago's copyright/trademark status. I am moving the theme to the Nimbus font family. I just uploaded a new version of the theme which uses NImbus to the wiki galleries for most rockbox devices.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on January 31, 2007, 09:24:44 AM
I'm not getting it to overwrite the backdrop, this is the first edit I've tried and the documentation doesn't seem to describe what the examples I'm trying to follow are doing... Anyway, let me know what you think.

Thanks sp!!:  I've downloaded the file.  I am out of town through Friday, so it will be this weekend till I have a chance to look at it.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: jaybeee on March 15, 2007, 01:17:01 PM
Hi JustJohnny

I really like this wps. Very simple & clear. I like the volume & command shapes  ;D

One thing: when playing a file via a cue sheet, it doesn't tell me what track I'm on. Maybe adding a piece of code to add 'track nn of track nn' between the Artist & Genre lines (i.e. the space line).

In the format: 1/20, 2/20... 10/20

Perhaps this only needs to be done if a file is being played via a cuesheet; although I have no idea if you can tell this.

The progress bar goes a bit screwy with a file being played by a cue sheet too. BUT that seems to happen with all the wps's that have a progress bar. By that I mean the progress bar does get filled in, but not completely and so there are small gaps left.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: Paul Slocum on March 15, 2007, 02:16:57 PM
I like this theme a lot and have been using it some of the time.  But what about using a grayscale in it?  You could at least use grayscale to anti-alias your icons, which I bet would look really slick.

Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: bluebrother on March 15, 2007, 03:50:58 PM
Hi JustJonny,

I recently tried the svn version Rockboxed on my h120. I think it's too dark, especially the black bar at the bottom. Comparing it with the ipod mini the reason is quite clear: the backlight of the h120 is too low to make this look good. I played around with the graphics a bit, especially by adding greyscale and mimicing the look of the color version of the progress bar. I ended up with something like this -- what do you think? Also, IMO the battery looks strange the way it changes from black to white.
(http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uhcn/rockbox/dump_0027.bmp)
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: jaybeee on March 15, 2007, 04:47:13 PM
^^ nice to see I kick-started this thread again  ;)

I quite like what bluebrother has done and I actually agree about the battery thing; confused me a lot to begin with.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on March 15, 2007, 08:16:04 PM
Hi all,

Thanks everyone for your feedback.  I've been gathering comments from people on the various devices, and still plan to make changes to improve the theme--just as soon as the rest of my life relaxes a little.

Hi JustJonny,

I recently tried the svn version Rockboxed on my h120. I think it's too dark, especially the black bar at the bottom. Comparing it with the ipod mini the reason is quite clear: the backlight of the h120 is too low to make this look good. I played around with the graphics a bit, especially by adding greyscale and mimicing the look of the color version of the progress bar. I ended up with something like this -- what do you think? Also, IMO the battery looks strange the way it changes from black to white.

hey bluebrother, could you take a photograph of your h120 with a current svn build of the theme and post it next to your modified version in your post. It helps when I can see what the screen actually displays.  The simulators are great, but not perfect.  

For the progress bar on the mono color versions of the theme, I have to admit I got a little lazy by the time I was modifying the theme for them, and started using the default progress bar. I like your version.

The battery should be solid white for a full charge and then the white fill should shrink from right to left, leaving an outline of the battery around 0% capacity. Is this what is happening?
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: bluebrother on March 16, 2007, 05:57:42 AM
hey bluebrother, could you take a photograph of your h120 with a current svn build of the theme and post it next to your modified version in your post. It helps when I can see what the screen actually displays.  The simulators are great, but not perfect.
photograph: http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uhcn/rockbox/img_8462.jpg
That is with the backlight enabled which makes it look quite ... dark.

Quote
For the progress bar on the mono color versions of the theme, I have to admit I got a little lazy by the time I was modifying the theme for them, and started using the default progress bar. I like your version.
If you want to I can post my version somewhere. The first time I looked at the theme on my player I didn't like it at all, but when I had a look at the color version I knew why ;) Which made my try mimicing the color version a bit more ...

Quote
The battery should be solid white for a full charge and then the white fill should shrink from right to left, leaving an outline of the battery around 0% capacity. Is this what is happening?
Yes, but that's confusing -- I would expect it to be the other way round. Which is why I added greys in my version -- it's much clearer in the color version.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: bascule on March 16, 2007, 06:21:53 AM
I'm liking the greyscale version. It would be good to put it on the Wiki.
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on March 16, 2007, 09:52:56 AM

Yes, but that's confusing -- I would expect it to be the other way round. Which is why I added greys in my version -- it's much clearer in the color version.
Ok, coming from designing it in color, and not having a grayscale device, it seemed natural to me, but real usage trumps my preconceptions :)

If you could post your version to the WPS tiwki page as Bascule suggests, either as a separate entry or place it within the rockboxed entry, I will create a patch to get it into the svn builds.

Thanks for your help and interest in the theme!
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and tes
Post by: jaybeee on March 16, 2007, 10:51:20 AM
what d'ya think about adding the tracknum or playlist info?

Would be useful imo  :)
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: JustJohnny on March 16, 2007, 02:22:53 PM
what d'ya think about adding the tracknum or playlist info?

Would be useful imo  :)
Hi Jaybeee, I've been contemplating changing the "Genre" tag above the progress bar to be some other type of info.  Playlist info. has been suggested in a couple other Rockboxed threads, so I am leaning towards that.

I'd rather replace, then add more info. to the screen.  Part of my goal for the theme is to keep it "clean looking".
Title: Re: 160x128x1 (iRiver H1x0 and iPod 4G Grey) theme: ROCKboxed--please review and
Post by: bluebrother on March 17, 2007, 12:29:19 PM
JustJohnny: I put my greyscaled version of Rockboxed here: http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uhcn/rockbox/rockboxed-grey.zip
The reason for not using the wiki is simple: as Rockboxed is in svn I don't consider it a good solution putting it in the wiki as it will hopefully go into svn soon. I adjusted the mini (138x110) version as well and added a file that lists the images that should be unused now (i.e. are removed from the zip file). The zip file itself is made from inside of the wps/ folder of a svn checkout, so it contains all files needed for all versions.

Please tell me what you think -- would be great if we could commit this to svn soon.