Recent Posts
91
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chris_s on January 04, 2025, 08:43:59 PM »Should I just make sure all viewports explicitly have a height?
You don't really need to do that. Just make sure that if you've set "-" as a viewport's height, you haven't defined any other viewports between it and the bottommost screen edge (unless conditionals are used to switch between them). Otherwise, you may have to deal with unexpected behavior or visual artifacts, especially when the UI viewport is in the way.
In case of the bottommost viewport, it actually makes perfect sense to use "-" as its height.
Keep in mind that using "-" as the height is essentially shorthand for using the result of subtracting the y coordinate of the viewport from the screen height. So, on a 320x240px screen, if you have a viewport that starts at (20, 20) and you set its dimensions as (100, -), that's the same as if you had written (100, 220) instead.
I don't know if you've used that in your themes: There's actually also the option of setting the height to some negative number, e.g. -20, which works very similarly in that it extends the viewport until reaching the given distance from the screen edge. So (100, -20) would be equivalent to writing (100, 200) for a viewport that starts at (20,20).
Works for the coordinates of a viewport too, so that (20,20) is the same as (-300, -220).
92
Hardware / Re: Problem when Backlight on Hold is set to Off
« Last post by iPodVT on January 04, 2025, 07:30:29 PM »More info:
Yes - those Classics that were freezing after Idle timeout do not require that the iPod had been in a Playing state for the freeze to occur.
I have again checked Idle timeout with Backlight on Hold set to Normal (instead of Off) and the Hold Switch engaged. The iPod did not freeze, and I observed that at shutdown the LCD briefly lit up and displayed "Shutting down…". As well, if Backlight on Hold is set to Off and I manually shutdown the iPod, the LCD displays "Shutting down…" because the Hold Switch is not engaged and the LCD is still lit. I can't help but feel that Rockbox is not able to complete some event/action involved with displaying the shutting down msg and so it is seemingly suspended in a frozen 'on' state.
Also, when I wrote "…when I do restart the device via SELECT+MENU press-and-hold, the battery charge is significantly lower than I expect it to be" I should have specified that the restart attempt was some hours after the iPod should have shutdown.
Yes - those Classics that were freezing after Idle timeout do not require that the iPod had been in a Playing state for the freeze to occur.
I have again checked Idle timeout with Backlight on Hold set to Normal (instead of Off) and the Hold Switch engaged. The iPod did not freeze, and I observed that at shutdown the LCD briefly lit up and displayed "Shutting down…". As well, if Backlight on Hold is set to Off and I manually shutdown the iPod, the LCD displays "Shutting down…" because the Hold Switch is not engaged and the LCD is still lit. I can't help but feel that Rockbox is not able to complete some event/action involved with displaying the shutting down msg and so it is seemingly suspended in a frozen 'on' state.
Also, when I wrote "…when I do restart the device via SELECT+MENU press-and-hold, the battery charge is significantly lower than I expect it to be" I should have specified that the restart attempt was some hours after the iPod should have shutdown.
93
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chuck_lardo on January 04, 2025, 07:22:22 PM »Downloaded, I love the BONES theme as well. This is really cool!
94
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chuck_lardo on January 04, 2025, 07:21:21 PM »The theme and color schemes you've posted look very beautiful!
You can eliminate flashing of the UI viewport when changing screens, by preventing simultaneously displayed, overlapping viewports, i.e. by constraining the height of the time viewport to 37, height of the day to 26 and (possibly) x/y-coordinates of usb to 1,1, so that they don' conflict with the UI viewport. I think your other theme has a similar issue that's easily remedied
I noticed that the USB viewport didn't display anything for me (literally a white screen), because the current font didn't have the needed characters. You'll probably want to explicitly set a font for the viewport, or users may get very different experiences with your theme. If, in addition to that, you set a font in your themes config file, it will be used in plugins like PictureFlow or when displaying file tags in fullscreen, instead of whatever the user has set, possibly from a previous theme.
some other things that caught my eye:
- maybe on purpose: the "red" area of the volume bar seems to start at -6dB already on an iPod video
- Personally I would exchange the artist field for the track title, but that could just be me
- A stylistic choice to go without a UI viewport title, I assume, although it can be quite useful, e.g. to see what playlist you're in
- SBS doesn't seem to have a lock indicator (on purpose?)
- always a good idea to reset backdrop and filetype colors from a previous theme:
backdrop: -
filetype colours: -
Sweet, thanks for the suggestions.
I have never noticed the flashing viewport thing but I'll look in to it. You are right, BONES has the same issue. Should I just make sure all viewports explicitly have a height?
The USB screen was a bit of an experiment. I get different fonts on my Classic compared to my H2. Kode Mono doesn't have the ASCII characters but I assumed the device system font would take care of it. Thanks for letting me know that is not the case. I will need to think of an alternative for sure.
I was tossing up whether to keep the 'red' area on the volume bar as volume range is not uniform across devices. iPod Classic is -60 to +12 and my H2 is -74 to -2. I left it in as I am never listening at that volume level. Aesthetically I guess I should keep the bar uniform.
Artist and track order is intentional. One of the decisions where I wanted to do something different to BONES.
Lock indicator on the SBS I think I have just overlooked. I'll add one.
Resetting the backdrop is a good tip, thanks for that too.
I'll get started on an update,
Cheers.
95
Hardware / Re: Problem when Backlight on Hold is set to Off
« Last post by iPodVT on January 04, 2025, 05:56:16 PM »I thought that the iPods had to have been playing in order for the problem to occur, but just now I tried the Idle Timeout scenario without having the iPod play at all and got the freeze. I don't know if it will consistently occur over multiple trials, so I'll check that and follow up.
96
Hardware / IPod 6G Shutdown Hang -- Problem when Backlight on Hold is set to Off
« Last post by iPodVT on January 04, 2025, 05:39:30 PM »I think that having Backlight on Hold set to Off is causing some flash-modded iPod Classics (ipod6g) to sometimes freeze when shutting down in response to Idle Poweroff timeouts and Sleep Timer timeouts, subsequently requiring a SELECT+MENU press-and-hold the next time I want to turn the device on. The reasons I think the iPods are frozen and not entirely shutdown are: 1) I can't turn on the device with any 'normal' button presses nor by disengaging the Hold Switch nor by connecting to power, and 2) when I do restart the device via SELECT+MENU press-and-hold, the battery charge is significantly lower than I expect it to be (even accounting for the usual somewhat flaky fluctuating battery charge indications that are sometimes displayed with iPod Classics).
This problem does not occur when Backlight on Hold is set to Normal (I haven't tried setting it to On). I first started experiencing the problem about a month or so ago (IIRC). Around the same time, as part of a general attempt to try to conserve battery power, I changed the Backlight on Hold setting from Normal to Off and started pretty much always engaging the Hold switch when I wasn't actively controlling the iPod. But it took some weeks before it occurred to me that there might be an association between that setting change and the freezes. Now, after much observation and trying different scenarios I am able to deliberately and consistently make it happen on a few flash modded Classics - it never seems to happen with a Classic that has an HDD. Below are the steps I take to make the problem occur.
USING IDLE TIMEOUT:
1 - Set Backlight on Hold to Off.
2 - Set Idle Poweroff to the briefest setting available.
3 - Start the iPod playing.
4 - Advance Now Playing to the last track in the current playlist.
5 - Advance the track to shortly before its end, leaving enough time to complete the following steps.
6 - Go to the WPS.
7 - Engage the Hold Switch.
8 - Wait until well after the iPod should have shutdown*, and then try to restart the iPod.
USING SLEEP TIMER TIMEOUT:
1 - Set Backlight on Hold to Off.
2 - Set the Sleep Timer Default to the briefest setting available and then start the Sleep Timer counting down.
3 - Start the iPod playing a playlist that is longer than the Sleep Timer countdown.
4 - Go to the WPS.
5 - Engage the Hold Switch.
6 - Wait until well after the iPod should have shutdown*, and then try to restart the iPod.
*It's hard/impossible to observe when the shutdown occurs because the LCD stays black and "Shutting down…" is not displayed. Perhaps that is connected to the cause of the problem? [Edit: I know that in this situation the screen is supposed to stay black.]
All of the Classics I tested were running versions of Rockbox that had been posted within the last five days.
I had not encountered the problem with a 5th Gen iPod (ipodvideo) but I tested the same steps as above to verify. I have not used any other iPod models in a while.
This problem does not occur when Backlight on Hold is set to Normal (I haven't tried setting it to On). I first started experiencing the problem about a month or so ago (IIRC). Around the same time, as part of a general attempt to try to conserve battery power, I changed the Backlight on Hold setting from Normal to Off and started pretty much always engaging the Hold switch when I wasn't actively controlling the iPod. But it took some weeks before it occurred to me that there might be an association between that setting change and the freezes. Now, after much observation and trying different scenarios I am able to deliberately and consistently make it happen on a few flash modded Classics - it never seems to happen with a Classic that has an HDD. Below are the steps I take to make the problem occur.
USING IDLE TIMEOUT:
1 - Set Backlight on Hold to Off.
2 - Set Idle Poweroff to the briefest setting available.
3 - Start the iPod playing.
4 - Advance Now Playing to the last track in the current playlist.
5 - Advance the track to shortly before its end, leaving enough time to complete the following steps.
6 - Go to the WPS.
7 - Engage the Hold Switch.
8 - Wait until well after the iPod should have shutdown*, and then try to restart the iPod.
USING SLEEP TIMER TIMEOUT:
1 - Set Backlight on Hold to Off.
2 - Set the Sleep Timer Default to the briefest setting available and then start the Sleep Timer counting down.
3 - Start the iPod playing a playlist that is longer than the Sleep Timer countdown.
4 - Go to the WPS.
5 - Engage the Hold Switch.
6 - Wait until well after the iPod should have shutdown*, and then try to restart the iPod.
*It's hard/impossible to observe when the shutdown occurs because the LCD stays black and "Shutting down…" is not displayed. Perhaps that is connected to the cause of the problem? [Edit: I know that in this situation the screen is supposed to stay black.]
All of the Classics I tested were running versions of Rockbox that had been posted within the last five days.
I had not encountered the problem with a 5th Gen iPod (ipodvideo) but I tested the same steps as above to verify. I have not used any other iPod models in a while.
97
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by dconrad on January 04, 2025, 02:52:52 PM »Downloaded, I love the BONES theme as well. This is really cool!
98
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chris_s on January 04, 2025, 11:11:52 AM »The theme and color schemes you've posted look very beautiful!
You can eliminate flashing of the UI viewport when changing screens, by preventing simultaneously displayed, overlapping viewports, i.e. by constraining the height of the time viewport to 37, height of the day to 26 and (possibly) x/y-coordinates of usb to 1,1, so that they don' conflict with the UI viewport. I think your other theme has a similar issue that's easily remedied
I noticed that the USB viewport didn't display anything for me (literally a white screen), because the current font didn't have the needed characters. You'll probably want to explicitly set a font for the viewport, or users may get very different experiences with your theme. If, in addition to that, you set a font in your themes config file, it will be used in plugins like PictureFlow or when displaying file tags in fullscreen, instead of whatever the user has set, possibly from a previous theme.
some other things that caught my eye:
- maybe on purpose: the "red" area of the volume bar seems to start at -6dB already on an iPod video
- Personally I would exchange the artist field for the track title, but that could just be me
- A stylistic choice to go without a UI viewport title, I assume, although it can be quite useful, e.g. to see what playlist you're in
- SBS doesn't seem to have a lock indicator (on purpose?)
- always a good idea to reset backdrop and filetype colors from a previous theme:
backdrop: -
filetype colours: -
You can eliminate flashing of the UI viewport when changing screens, by preventing simultaneously displayed, overlapping viewports, i.e. by constraining the height of the time viewport to 37, height of the day to 26 and (possibly) x/y-coordinates of usb to 1,1, so that they don' conflict with the UI viewport. I think your other theme has a similar issue that's easily remedied
I noticed that the USB viewport didn't display anything for me (literally a white screen), because the current font didn't have the needed characters. You'll probably want to explicitly set a font for the viewport, or users may get very different experiences with your theme. If, in addition to that, you set a font in your themes config file, it will be used in plugins like PictureFlow or when displaying file tags in fullscreen, instead of whatever the user has set, possibly from a previous theme.
some other things that caught my eye:
- maybe on purpose: the "red" area of the volume bar seems to start at -6dB already on an iPod video
- Personally I would exchange the artist field for the track title, but that could just be me
- A stylistic choice to go without a UI viewport title, I assume, although it can be quite useful, e.g. to see what playlist you're in
- SBS doesn't seem to have a lock indicator (on purpose?)
- always a good idea to reset backdrop and filetype colors from a previous theme:
backdrop: -
filetype colours: -
99
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chuck_lardo on January 03, 2025, 09:32:23 PM »Config files for colours - BONUS
Rename the files by deleting .txt from the path.
Rename the files by deleting .txt from the path.
100
Theming and Appearance Customization / Re: SPAZZ theme
« Last post by chuck_lardo on January 03, 2025, 09:21:57 PM »Config files for colours - Part 2
Rename the files by deleting .txt from the path.
Rename the files by deleting .txt from the path.