| Monday, September 6th, 2010, 04:01 UTC | ||
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| [07:59:39] | justinh: | I'll stick to my plain rounded rects I think :) |
| [08:08:37] | gbee: | in case it wasn't clear I was trying to offer constructive criticism, it's pretty easy to get carried away, I'd recommend considering as many screens as possible when deciding on the style of a new theme, most of us tend to start with an idea of what the main menu and watch recordings screens should look like but forget that most of mythtv's screens are quite different from those two |
| [08:09:25] | justinh: | yeah well, a few times when making 'concept' I've had to have a rethink |
| [08:10:02] | justinh: | usually the first thought is "why am I doing this again?" |
| [08:11:15] | gbee: | almost all themes have good looking menus and watch recordings screens, but the rest of the screens don't match up in standard because they were made up as the themer went along |
| [08:12:46] | justinh: | aye, it's important to consider as many screens as you use before you go too far |
| [08:13:39] | justinh: | infact, I'd probably even say more important is to decide how all the base elements are going to look *first* – because cleaning them up later can be a pain |
| [08:14:53] | justinh: | I think I've still got a couple of popup menus to sort out |
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| [13:45:43] | gbee: | I wonder if that new theme uses shapes for it's 'glass', I can see that working pretty well and much less work than using static images |
| [13:47:48] | justinh: | didn't have much choice other than to use shapes for some bits of mine.. variable width areas :) |
| [13:51:01] | iamlindoro: | I was saying in -users yesterday, it's disappointing (and on some level ?frustrating? ?flattering?) that themes continue to rip off widgets from Graphite and Arclight... they'll spend weeks/months laying things out, but not two nights designing widgets |
| [13:51:18] | iamlindoro: | (including the new one posted to the wiki) |
| [13:51:43] | justinh: | might be 2 nights, but it's pretty intense |
| [13:51:57] | justinh: | especially stuff at the base level |
| [13:53:51] | justinh: | edit, go in, go in , go in, check it, edit it again, reload.. my old way of working isn't productive anymore |
| [13:55:02] | justinh: | the *smart* thing to do would be to plan everything out in advance |
| [13:55:09] | justinh: | and I mean *everything( |
| [13:57:42] | gbee: | iamlindoro: I thought the re-use of your date widget/style was just pure laziness |
| [13:58:04] | justinh: | maybe they like how it looks |
| [13:58:36] | iamlindoro: | gbee, That part I figure has limited enough variations that "meh, ideas are going to overlap," but the outright reuse of the checkboxes/buttons/progress bars... well... a little less so |
| [13:58:54] | gbee: | I hadn't actually noticed any other rip-offs from arclight/graphite, but I wasn't looking for them either |
| [13:59:25] | gbee: | the buttons were ripped off? Huh |
| [13:59:34] | justinh: | IMHO there are only so many UI paradigms currently possible which will appeal to most folks.. there's gonna be overlap everywhere |
| [13:59:46] | iamlindoro: | a few of them-- those from the edit metadata screen are from Graphite |
| [13:59:55] | gbee: | well imitation, yada-yada |
| [14:00:01] | iamlindoro: | yeah, I guess |
| [14:00:08] | gbee: | no-one has imitated Terra ... |
| [14:00:10] | justinh: | it's a hell of a lot of work for one guy to do |
| [14:00:47] | justinh: | think I've already put in the same amount of time into concept that I did to do my previous stuff |
| [14:01:07] | iamlindoro: | gbee, Terra is just tougher to rip off, all the widgets fit together too well :) |
| [14:02:53] | justinh: | yeh well, so long as I keep refraining from commenting too much on new themes they'll keep appearing :) |
| [14:03:19] | justinh: | nobody will really want to know what I think. it has a habit of putting peopl eoff |
| [14:06:01] | gbee: | justinh: probably better that way, maybe we'll see an evolution, a whole bunch of mediocre themes from which all the best ideas will be nicked creating a second gen of better themes and so on |
| [14:06:49] | justinh: | it's depressing though.. that there's been so little 3rd-party effort which really pops out |
| [14:07:09] | justinh: | kinda reflects the sad state of OSS contributions though I think |
| [14:07:10] | gbee: | that's at least partially what I wanted to happen, themers taking the best ideas out there to create the best UI |
| [14:09:27] | gbee: | more linux oss contributions, linux just doesn't attract artistic types, there are plenty of talented people out there giving their time to free artwork/themes, but since they tend to be OSX/Windows users all their work goes to projects with an established presence on those platforms |
| [14:09:38] | justinh: | bit depressed I'm not at the top of my game anymore too. stayed out for too long & fell behind |
| [14:10:11] | justinh: | plus any spare time is now tiny snatches rather than whole bunches of multiple hours ;) |
| [14:10:32] | justinh: | doing any stuff like this needs a damn good run-up |
| [14:11:06] | justinh: | oops s/depressed/downhearted/.. not really depressed. tired |
| [14:15:29] | gbee: | despite all we've said here about originality, it's very tempting to produce a couple of themes which imitate other media centre/stb themes as I did for the demo theme, I really enjoyed doing that plus it's a great way of encouraging users to realise that mythui can look like xbmc etc |
| [14:16:17] | justinh: | that's kind of what I set out to do with 'concept'. has to be mega-readable for my mrs |
| [14:16:39] | justinh: | and no better way to do that than emulate an appliance |
| [14:18:01] | justinh: | though prolly not going as far as Sky/Virgin with their 40px high letters ;) |
| [14:20:33] | justinh: | all the UI work & not once have I clapped eyes on any theory about it |
| [16:29:06] | iamlindoro: | Jim Stichnoth seems not to understand that some themers might not *want* to put two dozen status icons in their PBB |
| [17:18:10] | sphery: | Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't get that you have to leave a blank space for each icon you want to support (IIRC)... |
| [17:18:45] | sphery: | Perhaps if I'm correct, such a comment should be made on the ticket so users don't get the expectation that all themes /must/ show all states. |
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| [18:26:58] | justinh: | heh |
| [18:28:02] | justinh: | maybe mythfrontend should segfault if any one icon is missing, like the olden days |
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| [19:59:39] | Captain_Murdoch: | themes copying themes is another part of the reason that I was thinking of allowing a user-maintained repository of downloadable themes. just a wiki page or something with links to themeinfo.xml files which would contain links to the download zip file. so there would be 3 theme locations. local, mythtv-blessed downloadable from the official mythtv.org site, and user-contributed themes with the list downloadable from this |
| [19:59:39] | Captain_Murdoch: | 3rd source. we can't start allowing things like copyrighted images in the themes we offer for download, but policing that and checking for other requirements to be on the official download site could end up being a large job. |
| [20:06:30] | stuartm: | you mean where the themer is not the copyright holder, right? Best we can do is have a proper procedure for takedown requests |
| [20:19:28] | sphery: | Speaking of themes and the Theme Chooser... I really think we should clean up trunk/mythtv/themes... I think MythCenter-wide should be move to trunk/myththemes. I would love for us to move all themes except one (that stretches/squishes well for widescreen/square screens) and then the user can use the Theme Chooser to pick the one they want. |
| [20:20:28] | sphery: | I'm happy to do the moves, but I don't know which theme to suggest as default. |
| [20:21:25] | sphery: | If others agree, I can send a message to one of the lists to seek feedback on the idea. |
| [20:30:38] | Captain_Murdoch: | stuartm, re: copyright, yeah, but we should probably do a best-effort to review everything before we put a theme up as well. |
| [20:33:13] | Captain_Murdoch: | sphery, I was thinking of keeping them all in 0.24 and dropping/moving them in 0.25. I need to finish the tweak to the theme chooser to use a .zip file for the initial download, but that could get huge if we have 20–30 themes available. I'm thinking I may need to come up with a better solution such as downloading the images individually locally first then ::Load()ing them in the screen. that way scrolling will be quicker |
| [20:33:13] | Captain_Murdoch: | since we're just statting the remote image once when we open the screen and later during previews, etc. we just look at the local file which we previously checked. |
| [20:35:14] | Captain_Murdoch: | I think it would be nice if we had a single theme that had 4:3 and 16:9 versions that was our default theme. then from that point users could download anything else they need. packages could still package up all the themes they wanted, but our main tarballs would have only 2 versions of the same theme. we could still keep officially maintained themes in svn. |
| [20:35:34] | sphery: | that would be the ideal situation |
| [20:37:08] | sphery: | unfortunately, getting someone to design both a 4:3 and a 16:9 version of a theme that's also "non-controversial" enough to use as a default theme will be a challenge. :) |
| [20:37:20] | Captain_Murdoch: | iamlindoro volunteered (I think) to work on a more conservative, less flashy, (my words) default theme if we wanted to go that direction for our target release timeline next year. not sure if that would be something he'd work on for 0.25 or a subsequent release. I think it should be something new though that shows off MythUI, but also isn't going to stress lower-end systems. |
| [20:38:06] | sphery: | (remembering, also, that we still need a separate default and default-wide, which are not actual themes, but "fallbacks for missing parts of themes", and--unless something has changed recently--cannot be chosen as the theme to use in MythTV) |
| [20:38:07] | Captain_Murdoch: | I think between him, stuartm, and a couple others, some basic designs/layouts could be agreed on and knocked out. |
| [20:38:22] | Captain_Murdoch: | right, they are excluded in the theme chooser |
| [20:39:01] | sphery: | so that makes for basically 4 themes--unless we actually make default* usable and set it as the default |
| [20:39:08] | Captain_Murdoch: | there's also not a huge reason for those not to be the default themes. |
| [20:39:14] | Captain_Murdoch: | not that I know of at least. |
| [20:39:23] | Captain_Murdoch: | said the same thing I guess. :) |
| [20:39:26] | sphery: | I wouldn't mind the latter approach if someone makes a designed-for-mythui default theme |
| [20:39:43] | sphery: | so, yeah |
| [20:40:08] | sphery: | guess we all need to beer iamlindoro and maybe we can have that fixed up for <some future version> :) |
| [20:40:42] | Captain_Murdoch: | would be nice to just start from scratch, nuke default and default-wide and make a new default and default-wide that were the only included themes. |
| [20:41:07] | Captain_Murdoch: | iamlindoro, stuartm, ^^ opinions? |
| [20:41:56] | sphery: | and I trust that iamlindoro would do much better with the default* themes than our current ones--where it seems that people are putting /everything/ into the themes because it can be put in there (and not because it /should/ be put in there) |
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| [20:42:17] | sphery: | I'm pretty sure his plan is to start from scratch |
| [20:42:39] | sphery: | or, in his words, "start from [basic] widgets" :) |
| [20:43:02] | Captain_Murdoch: | I tested my 'one file .zip' download for the theme chooser startup and it was definitely faster in startup and scrolling around, but it would get unwieldy with a large number of themes, so I need to look at other options. right now there are 12 themes on there and I know of at least 4 more that aren't on there (yet?) |
| [20:43:19] | iamlindoro: | Captain_Murdoch, I have begun brainstorming on a completely replaced default and -wide |
| [20:43:26] | Captain_Murdoch: | iamlindoro, great! :) |
| [20:43:35] | iamlindoro: | Captain_Murdoch, I just didn't want to present the idea until I had something to show |
| [20:43:40] | Captain_Murdoch: | do you agree on those being the 'defaults' (ie, usable themes) |
| [20:44:08] | Captain_Murdoch: | so they're usable, but also where we fall back to when something isn't implemented in the currently selected theme. |
| [20:44:09] | iamlindoro: | I need to read the log, hang on, I'm just back from a reboot |
| [20:44:47] | sphery: | here, again, Captain_Murdoch and I were basically saying the same thing--so feel free to ignore my lines |
| [20:44:53] | ** Captain_Murdoch has to run, but I like the idea and think it would give us less to maintain and it would guarantee that the fallbacks were feature complete. ** | |
| [20:45:09] | iamlindoro: | OK, I am missing it, which 4 are were proposing? |
| [20:45:25] | sphery: | agreed--and we just need to make sure that devs understand that not everything belongs in default |
| [20:45:49] | Captain_Murdoch: | only proposing 2. ie, 'default' becomes the new 'Default 4:3 theme'. default-wide becomes the new 'Default 16:9 theme'. no other themes included in the mythtv tarball. |
| [20:46:02] | sphery: | iamlindoro: actually, just 2... the proposal is to make a new, designed-from-scratch-for-mythui defauld and default-wide and actually allow the user to choose them as a full-fledged theme |
| [20:46:06] | Captain_Murdoch: | ie, they are both the fallback theme info and the two stock default themes. |
| [20:46:09] | iamlindoro: | Oh, ok-- yeah, that works, though it shoudl have a name, ideally |
| [20:46:23] | Captain_Murdoch: | yeah. I'd agree on a rename. |
| [20:46:30] | sphery: | maybe a name in themeinfo.xml, but still a default dirname? |
| [20:46:37] | iamlindoro: | And yeah, the big thing is as sphery mentioned-- keeping everyone from cramming every new textarea, statetype, etc. into default just because it's there |
| [20:46:54] | sphery: | *cough*CODEC name*cough* |
| [20:47:08] | iamlindoro: | sphery, sure, that would even allow a user to user their own theme as the fallback, if it were complete enough |
| [20:47:21] | Captain_Murdoch: | that's part of why it should be the same theme. ie, the fallback becomes an actual theme that is the default theme unless people download another one. |
| [20:47:23] | iamlindoro: | ie, rename your theme to default (or default-wide) and it will always be the fallback |
| [20:47:41] | ** Captain_Murdoch really has to run this time. ** | |
| [20:47:53] | iamlindoro: | see ya |
| [20:57:30] | justinh: | historically the best reason to have everything permissible in default (IMHO) was to serve as an example of how to use it. of course that's immaterial since the docs have been sorted out :) |
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| [21:35:11] | sphery: | justinh: yeah, between docs and, if we really have to include everything in default, comments, we can still make default a good template |
| [21:35:27] | sphery: | but the current default is a /terrible/ starting point for new theme development since it's not even a mythui theme :) |
| [21:35:37] | justinh: | heh agreed |
| [21:36:04] | justinh: | going through all that & sorting it out was always on my own radar, but just never got around to it |
| [21:36:04] | sphery: | it's a line-by-line conversion of a pre-mythui theme--about akin to doing a line-by-line conversion of Fortran to Ada versus redesigning the app for the new language |
| [21:36:30] | justinh: | I just don't have what it takes anymore :) |
| [21:36:39] | justinh: | any of it |
| [21:45:52] | sphery: | I can totally understand... It's a lot of (unfortunately) thankless work. |
| [21:46:20] | sphery: | that said, I very much appreciate the work all you themers do--and I would like to thank you for doing that great work :) |
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