Mailing List Archive

New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite
Hi all,

Don't know how many have been following the status updates over the
past few months, but I think I finally have Graphite into a releasable
state.  Not *everything* is as it will be when .22 is out, but it's
certainly good enough for people to use it and to finally put to bed
the notion that trunk has no usable themes available.  I'll quickly
highlight some of the gotchas and some of the limitations, as well as
some of the features.

MythUI is the first theme that (hopefully!) has themed all current
MythUI converted screens.  I have also themed a few pending features
(such as my own patches to add TV Show support to MythVideo, export to
MythVideo, and the MythGame MythUI conversion patch).  I have tried to
focus on showing off some of the new features such as
Fanart/Banner/Coverart support in MythVideo and "Watch Recordings."
Graphite randomizes all menu backgrounds between a few primary color
backdrops, but you can add your own randomized background directory by
symlinking images/backgrounds/ in the theme folder to a folder
containing backgrounds of your choice.

Things *you* will need to do:

To have Graphite look anything like my examples, you will need to
download fanart.  This means using the tmdb.pl grabber script for
movies and (if you have my TV Episode support patches installed)
ttvdb.py for TV.  My patch for TV episode support will automatically
download fanart/covers in a format compatible with finding them in
"Watch Recordings."  In case you don't have those patches installed,
here's how you can see fun fanart in "Watch Recordings":

Set up fanart and coverart directories in
Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->General.
Download fanart and coverart into their appropriate directories using
any of the following naming schemes:

    Show Name.png (or jpg or gif)
Show_Name.png
Show-Name.png
Show.Name.png
(any of the above plus) Season #.png
(any of the above plus) s##e##.png

Pretty much anything you can think of, the hunt should find. Note
that the naming must exactly match the title naming of the recording.
So "Battlestar Galactica (2003) Season 1.png" will lose, but
"Battlestar Galactica Season 1.png" will win.

Use this naming convention for both fanart and coverart. I've spoken
with someone about getting a perl script out to automatically pull in
fanart, coverart, and banners for upcoming and recent recordings,
which could be cron'ed to make this all automatic. Hopefully we'll
see something like that soon, and my aim is to get it all done by the
backend for .23.

In MythVideo, you can get fanart/coverart by simply downloading
metadata with tmdb.pl. Note that with current trunk, this may involve
reseting the metadata on the film first. I have a patch that
addresses this that should hopefully go in someday soon.

Use the GL painter!! You *must* do this, as the qt painter breaks the
theme badly. Actually, it's my use of negative coordinates that
causes the issue, but the GL painter is more tolerant of this, and
until there's a way for it to work in the qt painter, you *need* to
use to GL painter. You'd also be missing tons of the eye candy
without it anyway.

"Hey! 'x' Isn't themed!"

Yes, I know. Anything that hasn't gotten a MythUI conversion is
unthemed. There are also two things I don't intend to theme. These
are: MythZoneMinder and the MythVideo Video Manager. I'm not setting
up MythZoneMinder (and it hasn't been MythUI'd anyway) and the Video
Manager is no longer necessary in trunk (since you can scan videos
from all MythVideo views) and I'm hoping to see it disappear.

And now, a favor...

Please don't report bugs with the theme to me yet. This is a
"release," but it's not a RELEASE. There are many things that are
currently placeholders for widgets that are still to come, and many
things where I just haven't figured out what my final design will be
yet either. Notably, this includes the menu. I'm not sure what I'm
doing with it yet so for now it's just something serviceable.

OK, have you read all of the above? It's really important, and the
theme won't work right for you if you didn't...

http://www.fecitfacta.com/graphite.tar.gz

Enjoy! Positive comments are appreciated, negative comments to /dev/null! :)

Robert
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
It's come to my attention that you will need to install the included font
manually (I know, yuck!). For me, this is:

sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Graphite/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype
sudo fc-cache -f

Looks horrible without the included font, as it falls back to (for me)
Bitstream Vera Sans, which breaks most of the spacing in the theme.

Robert
Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
Hi

2009/6/22 Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara@gmail.com>:
> sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Graphite/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype
> sudo fc-cache -f

Doesn't mythtv look automatically in the theme folder for the font ?
That was the case with 0.21...

I have themes with their own font, only present in the theme directory
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi
>
> 2009/6/22 Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara@gmail.com>:
> > sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Graphite/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype
> > sudo fc-cache -f
>
> Doesn't mythtv look automatically in the theme folder for the font ?
> That was the case with 0.21...
>

Unfortunately not (at least yet) in trunk, due to the mythUI switch. :(

Robert
Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
Robert McNamara wrote:
> It's come to my attention that you will need to install the included
> font manually (I know, yuck!). For me, this is:
>
> sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Graphite/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype
> sudo fc-cache -f
>
> Looks horrible without the included font, as it falls back to (for me)
> Bitstream Vera Sans, which breaks most of the spacing in the theme.
>
> Robert
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>
Robert,
Great job on the theme..I lurk on mythtv-users on irc and followed
your progress as you moved along.. I just wish i had the talent to
contribute..
Thanks for your effort,
Greg

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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:29 PM, greg <greg12866@nycap.rr.com> wrote:

>
>
>>
>>
> Robert,
> Great job on the theme..I lurk on mythtv-users on irc and followed your
> progress as you moved along.. I just wish i had the talent to contribute..
> Thanks for your effort,
> Greg
>
>
>

Thanks, Greg. Enjoy. It's still under pretty heavy development and there's
a lot that will change, but at least this puts something that's complete as
far as MythUI is concerned out there so that trunk feels a bit more usable.
Note that I had never taken on anything like this before starting
Graphite, and it's very much something you learn as you go, artwork
included, so having the talent is a learned thing.

On an unrelated note, I have added a bunch of new MythUI documentation
today. It's *almost* complete as far as what is converted so far, minus the
scheduling stuff, watch recordings, and one or two random screens, which are
just huge tasks to document and I'm not sure when I'll work up the energy
for it. Everything that is needed to get a theme done should be there,
though.

Robert.
Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On 06/21/2009 09:50 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> 2009/6/22 Robert McNamara:
>
>> sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Graphite/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype
>> sudo fc-cache -f
>>
> Doesn't mythtv look automatically in the theme folder for the font ?
> That was the case with 0.21...
>

I'm pretty certain that only the OSD themes do. We draw the fonts
directly in the OSD themes. In the GUI themes, we ask Qt for a QFont
(Qt manages the fonts/characters for us). The OSD is the same in trunk
as -fixes, but when it's converted to mythui, it may become more like
the GUI themes (requiring a system-installed font).

> I have themes with their own font, only present in the theme directory

I'm guessing you're actually using the closest match among the fonts you
have installed (or the font specified by your system's font substitutions).

Move the font out of that theme dir then restart, and I don't think
you'll see a difference. Then install the font on your system as Robert
mentioned, and restart, and you may see a difference.

Mike
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
Hi

2009/6/22 Michael T. Dean <mtdean@thirdcontact.com>:
> I'm guessing you're actually using the closest match among the fonts you
> have installed (or the font specified by your system's font substitutions).

I'm pretty certain that this isn't the case.

Because when I first packaged the MePo theme which contains font, I
forgot to include the font in the theme ; it gaves me warnings/error
about being unable to load the font, and the theme looked pretty bad.

Once I had installed the font in the theme directory properly, it was fine again
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi
>
> 2009/6/22 Michael T. Dean <mtdean@thirdcontact.com>:
> > I'm guessing you're actually using the closest match among the fonts you
> > have installed (or the font specified by your system's font
> substitutions).
>
> I'm pretty certain that this isn't the case.
>
> Because when I first packaged the MePo theme which contains font, I
> forgot to include the font in the theme ; it gaves me warnings/error
> about being unable to load the font, and the theme looked pretty bad.
>
> Once I had installed the font in the theme directory properly, it was fine
> again
>

This is not the case with trunk. The font must be installed systemwide.

Robert
Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
Hi

2009/6/22 Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara@gmail.com>:
> This is not the case with trunk.  The font must be installed systemwide.

I understand that ... I was responding to an earlier post.

I can't wait to try your theme...

I migrated my whole system to trunk over the week-end, but I get a lot
of segfault very often ; those occurs in libGL.so so I had to revert
to Qt rendering ; not as pretty :(
And according to your original post, OpenGL is required to properly
display your theme
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Robert
McNamara<robert.mcnamara@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Don't know how many have been following the status updates over the
> past few months, but I think I finally have Graphite into a releasable
> state.  Not *everything* is as it will be when .22 is out, but it's
> certainly good enough for people to use it and to finally put to bed
> the notion that trunk has no usable themes available.  I'll quickly
> highlight some of the gotchas and some of the limitations, as well as
> some of the features.
Excellent job.. Thanks!
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
Robert,

I like the new theme. My better half doesn't quite like the screen grabs
in the "watch recordings" screen without some sort of tag of what they are
for, but I think she'll get used to it once she starts using the categories
across the top - if she wants a particular show she can just run across to
it.

I know you said you weren't taking feedback yet, but I did see something
that you might not notice if you don't use that feature. On the TV Guide,
you can press the / key to cycle through channel groups (took me ages to
work out how to do that). It puts the group name briefly in the field that
normally shows the date, it goes away again after a couple seconds. You've
made the field exactly big enough for a date....and not big enough for a
channel group, so it gets truncated. Not requesting a fix or anything,
just telling you something that I noticed, in case you cared and hadn't
noticed it yourself.

Keep up the good work - I'm hopeful some other new themes will start to
flow too. I'm quite keen to see MePo come out - I found it a while ago and
wanted to install it, but I'd been running trunk for a while, and it just
doesn't go with mythui.

Paul

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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
paul10@planar.id.au wrote:
> Robert,
>
<snip>
> I know you said you weren't taking feedback yet, but I did see something
> that you might not notice if you don't use that feature. On the TV Guide,
> you can press the / key to cycle through channel groups (took me ages to
> work out how to do that). It puts the group name briefly in the field that
> normally shows the date, it goes away again after a couple seconds. You've
> made the field exactly big enough for a date....and not big enough for a
> channel group, so it gets truncated. Not requesting a fix or anything,
> just telling you something that I noticed, in case you cared and hadn't
> noticed it yourself.
>
>
<snip>
> Paul
>

Robert, Not sure it was ever documented but this is how the channel
group name is displayed. If you have room somewhere you can add a text
area called 'channelgroup' that will show the currently selected channel
group. If it doesn't exist the 'datetext' text area is briefly used to
show the channel group when it changes. The default-wide theme uses the
first method but the default one uses the second simply because there
isn't room for it.

Paul H.
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 2:30 AM, Paul Harrison<mythtv@sky.com> wrote:
> paul10@planar.id.au wrote:
>> Robert,
>>
> <snip>
>> I know you said you weren't taking feedback yet, but I did see something
>> that you might not notice if you don't use that feature.  On the TV Guide,
>> you can press the / key to cycle through channel groups (took me ages to
>> work out how to do that).  It puts the group name briefly in the field that
>> normally shows the date, it goes away again after a couple seconds.  You've
>> made the field exactly big enough for a date....and not big enough for a
>> channel group, so it gets truncated.  Not requesting a fix or anything,
>> just telling you something that I noticed, in case you cared and hadn't
>> noticed it yourself.
>>
>>
> <snip>
>> Paul
>>
>
> Robert, Not sure it was ever documented but this is how the channel
> group name is displayed. If you have room somewhere you can add a text
> area called 'channelgroup' that will show the currently selected channel
> group. If it doesn't exist the 'datetext' text area is briefly used to
> show the channel group when it changes. The default-wide theme uses the
> first method but the default one uses the second simply because there
> isn't room for it.
>
> Paul H.
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>

Hi Guys,

I'll take a look at this later today, thank you for the info. I
indeed don't use this functionality.

Robert
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 7:56 AM, Robert
McNamara<robert.mcnamara@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 2:30 AM, Paul Harrison<mythtv@sky.com> wrote:
>> paul10@planar.id.au wrote:
>>> Robert,
>>>
>> <snip>
>>> I know you said you weren't taking feedback yet, but I did see something
>>> that you might not notice if you don't use that feature.  On the TV Guide,
>>> you can press the / key to cycle through channel groups (took me ages to
>>> work out how to do that).  It puts the group name briefly in the field that
>>> normally shows the date, it goes away again after a couple seconds.  You've
>>> made the field exactly big enough for a date....and not big enough for a
>>> channel group, so it gets truncated.  Not requesting a fix or anything,
>>> just telling you something that I noticed, in case you cared and hadn't
>>> noticed it yourself.
>>>
>>>
>> <snip>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>
>> Robert, Not sure it was ever documented but this is how the channel
>> group name is displayed. If you have room somewhere you can add a text
>> area called 'channelgroup' that will show the currently selected channel
>> group. If it doesn't exist the 'datetext' text area is briefly used to
>> show the channel group when it changes. The default-wide theme uses the
>> first method but the default one uses the second simply because there
>> isn't room for it.
>>
>> Paul H.
>> _______________________________________________
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>> mythtv-theming@mythtv.org
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>>
>
> Hi Guys,
>
> I'll take a look at this later today, thank you for the info.  I
> indeed don't use this functionality.
>
> Robert
>

Paul and .. Paul,

Try the new version.

http://www.fecitfacta.com/graphite.072609.tar.gz

This should address both the channel group concerns and your wife's
issue w/ the Watch Recording screen. Note that I needed to modify
Graphite to use freely available fonts, ergo the font no longer being
included or used in the XML.

Robert
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 1:06 AM, <paul10@planar.id.au> wrote:
>
> Keep up the good work - I'm hopeful some other new themes will start to
> flow too.  I'm quite keen to see MePo come out - I found it a while ago and
> wanted to install it, but I'd been running trunk for a while, and it just
> doesn't go with mythui.

I wouldn't expect to see the original author do this, by the way. He
disappeared over a year ago if memory serves.

Robert
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
> Paul and .. Paul,
>
> Try the new version.
>
> http://www.fecitfacta.com/graphite.072609.tar.gz
>
> This should address both the channel group concerns and your wife's
> issue w/ the Watch Recording screen. Note that I needed to modify
> Graphite to use freely available fonts, ergo the font no longer being
> included or used in the XML.
>
> Robert

Very impressed with that. The group down the bottom of the tv guide screen
is brilliant, makes it much easier to see what's going on. And her indoors
(as she just described herself) is exceptionally excited that I can ask for
a change and it just happens. She said to say thanks from her - the
titles on the pictures are really useful and she now really likes the new
theme.

Paul


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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
> Very impressed with that.  The group down the bottom of the tv guide screen
> is brilliant, makes it much easier to see what's going on.  And her indoors
> (as she just described herself) is exceptionally excited that I can ask for
> a change and it just happens.  She said to say thanks from her  - the
> titles on the pictures are really useful and she now really likes the new
> theme.

Would be great if some screenshots could be posted of the new changes.
Many users can't run SVN so seeing some screenshots allows us to see
the hard work being spent on new themes. Cheers.
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Re: New Theme Release (Trunk/.22 only): Graphite [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:36 PM, nospam312<nospam312@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Very impressed with that.  The group down the bottom of the tv guide screen
>> is brilliant, makes it much easier to see what's going on.  And her indoors
>> (as she just described herself) is exceptionally excited that I can ask for
>> a change and it just happens.  She said to say thanks from her  - the
>> titles on the pictures are really useful and she now really likes the new
>> theme.
>
> Would be great if some screenshots could be posted of the new changes.
>  Many users can't run SVN so seeing some screenshots allows us to see
> the hard work being spent on new themes.  Cheers.

http://www.fecitfacta.com/PBB-update.png

Robert
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