[320x240] Tile based main menu

[Frankenpod]

Uploaded a first attempt at this.  Only the top-level menu and the 'settings' menu are done with icons.  Ran into problems when I tried to add others (also, not sure what's an 'intuitive' icon to represent something like "perceptual base enhancement" or "auditory fatigue reduction" - might as well just use text)

[Frankenpod]

Really baffled how to get sub-menus to work.

I have a 'plugins menu' for example.  But if you then select an item from it, e.g. 'games', instead of then giving you the textual listing of games to choose, it keeps the plugs icon menu on the screen, and tries to use that to select the games (which doesn't work as there are a lot more than 3 entries in the games list).  How do you tell it to _stop_ using an icon menu once you go to a lower-level menu?

Do you have to use a separate, labelled, "%Vi(label...)" statement for every sub-menu?  Even that doesn't seem to work as expected, as it seems to use the _content_ of the labelled menu, but retains the _dimensions_ of the previous menu (hence menus with fewer icons can't be properly formatted to put the icons centrally, they all end up at the top of the display).  Plus you can't use %cs to work out which menu you are on as the same %cs value is re-used for sub-menus (e.g. every sub-menu to the 'settings' menu returns a %cs value of 6)

Really can't work out the logic of it all.

Partly wonder if the menu-skinning functionality was never quite completed?  Or am i entirely misunderstanding the logic of the WPS scripting?

Anyone have any advice?

[Frankenpod]

OK, made some progress.  Can't figure out what's going on with the %Vi(label...) statement - it seems to ignore the dimensions you give for them and just use those of one of the other menu viewports you've defined (the first or the last, maybe?), but with the contents of the one you want to use.  Also it's a nuisance that %cs doesn't differentiate between top level menus and all the sub-menus, but seems like one can get round that by using %Lt. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding the whole logic of it and am only getting it to work by sheer accident?

Managed to get the icons arranged better by just changing their size by padding them out with black borders.  Maybe there's a better way to do it?

All menus now have icons, except the database, the sound settings and the general settings.  Struggled a bit to invent icons for the likes of 'haas surround sound'.
Really run out of energy for it now.  Might finish the last few menus some other time.  For now it will have to do.  (Also part of the battery meter graphic keeps flashing on-and-off as if something is overwriting it, but I can't figure out what.)

[Frankenpod]

The database menu is done, but I've concluded that so many of the remaining menus have multiple items that are impossible to signify with an intuitive icon (e.g. how do you represent "constrain directory auto change" or "cuesheet support" in icon form?) that I'm leaving the rest as text menus.
Also I'm finding when first switching to the theme it comes out garbled, until you go down and up a menu level, then it seems to sort itself out and functions normally from then on.  Not sure what's going on there.  Must be something to do with the order in which viewports get set.  If anyone can get the theme working more robustly(or has some great ideas for representing complicated technical menu options in icon form), feel free to upload an improved version.

[millim]

very cool progress, ginkgo, Frankenpod 

@Frankenpod can you share your code so far? I still have difficulties from where to start. It would be really helpful to have a working theme with all the necessary files to start my customization.

Thank you,
millim

 

[Frankenpod]

Well a recent version is already uploaded to the theme site - you could just download that and work with it.
(I've done a bit more since, but I've currently broken it again while trying to add stuff...will upload another version when that's fixed).

Really finding it hard to make sensible icons for things.  Found myself looking for an icon of someone using a skipping rope, to represent 'prevent track skipping', then decided it's getting silly.

[Frankenpod]

Now have icon menus for the database, playback settings, and general settings menus.  Will upload to the theme site at some point.

@millim - I assume you are aware that the scripts are all in the themes as downloaded, i.e. in the .wps and .sbs and .cfg files?  Mostly, in this case, all the tricky stuff is in the .sbs file.

[cereal_killer]

Really finding it hard to make sensible icons for things.

Rockbox has so many different settings, that I can't imagine anyone has made an icon for them anywhere in other projects. I personally think it's fine to use a general settings icon for the extraordinary ones.

By the way, great work from all of you. This makes the look of Rockbox better.

[Frankenpod]

Database, playback settings, and general settings menus.

Notice slightly desperate attempts at icons to represent the likes of "track" and "pause on headphone unplug".  And that I gave up entirely with a few entries.

Honestly, I'm really not at all sure I've understood the WPS engine syntax correctly, or if I've just got things to work by accident.  In particular I don't understand the order of execution of things and how it relates to the order of declaration - sometimes it seems like WPS scripting is strictly procedural, other times it seems more 'function' based (if that's the right terminology to describe the issue - I'm even confused about that).  Can't figure out the meaning of where statements are placed within a script - sometimes that seems to matter and other times it doesn't.

[Frankenpod]

Interesting that all that effort was made to put all this 'skinning' functionality into the core code, but nobody ever bothered to make use of it.  Maybe it's because the syntax for doing so is so opaque?  Don't think I'd have bothered if ginkgo hadn't figured out the fundamentals of it.

[gevaerts]

Interesting that all that effort was made to put all this 'skinning' functionality into the core code, but nobody ever bothered to make use of it.  Maybe it's because the syntax for doing so is so opaque?  Don't think I'd have bothered if ginkgo hadn't figured out the fundamentals of it.

I suspect it's because it was all near the end of the "active" theme engine work, so some of those glitches never got sorted out, and yes, the syntax is opaque. Many themes may have a lot of work put into graphics and visuals, but there were only ever a handful people who even tried out those fancy features.

[millim]

@gevaerts

well, rockbox has a long history and meanwhile the society is getting used to the "app-tile-based" interfaces, standard on today's IT equipment. Sure, it always depends on the requirements and it's priorities. Still, if the "WHY" cannot be answered, it is better to omit these fancy features rather than getting a syntax being opaque.


@ Frankenpod
I have tried it, but getting error on this line:
%Fl(2,12-Roboto-Bold.fnt)

The Roboto font, I cannot find, also the downloaded font package for the classic does not include the font. Also the github repos pointing to Roboto font set are empty? How can I resolve this?

I am using the ipod Classic rockboxui. When I load the theme, I cannot see the tiling (still the common list style), maybe mentioned due to this font issue?

millim 

[Frankenpod]

Hmmm, yes, seems the robotofonts package download is no longer at site linked to from this one.  Didn't realise I used it in the theme (and hadn't included it in the zip).  Puzzling, because usually the syntax-checker complains about missing font problems like that when you upload a theme.  When I get a moment will check if I used it in the theme (and failed to include it in the zip) and if so, add it to the zip and reupload it.

Yea, seems that I switched between bold and regular fonts and didn't change the one in the zip.  Will fix that with next upload.  Still rather puzzled why the syntax-checker didn't notice that issue - got used to relying on it picking up that sort of problem.

In the meantime you could edit the sbs file to look for 12-Roboto-Regular (which is what I included in the zip) instead of 12-Roboto-Bold.  That might fix it.

[millim]

thank you,

I was getting it to work , still had to change:

%Vi(MainMenu,32,20,252,180,1) to %Vi(-,32,20,252,180,1) to get the bitmaps correctly aligned to the backdrop boundaries. Otherwise, its getting ignored and defaults back to (0,0,320,240). Maybe there is a need to have a default viewport? I use the git version of rockbox roughly two weeks back.

BTW which tool can you prefer to draw and collect the icons to one bitmap? Maybe you can advice a tool that is free and runs on Linux.

Thank you very much for your help!
millim

[Frankenpod]

@millim

Thanks for that point about the viewport - it does seem as if putting a default viewport in as well as the labelled ones solves the glitch of it having messed-up views when you first load it (that problem seemed to go away after going into a sub-menu and coming back out again, but with a default viewport in there as well it seems to work correctly from the start).  I really don't fully grasp how the logic of viewports works, I think (really couldn't get the thing to correctly switch between menu viewports with different dimensions), but that seems to solve that problem so I've put it in there for the next upload, along with that missing font.

(Maybe a dev or someone could also look into the roboto font collection no longer being at the link where it used to be available?)