Mailing List Archive: How to set up a test bed for a theme

How to set up a test bed for a theme

Jul 31, 2011, 9:20 PM

Post #1 of 7 (3550 views)

I'm new to theme programing, but trying to learn. I currently use the
blue-abstract-wide theme and wanted to make some small changes to one of the
menus (baby steps in the learning process). Trying to follow the
instructions on the (several) theme wikis, I created a directory in the
mythtv user's home directory:

/home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes/blue-abstract-wide/

Then I copied the xml file I wanted to modify to that directory. I believe
the wiki said that the frontend will search this directory first and then
the /usr/[local]/share/mythtv/theme directory for everything else.

Well, that seemed to get mythtv and myself very confused. The first thing I
noticed was that I now had two versions of blue-abstract-wide to choose from
in the Theme Chooser setup menu. Not realizing what was happening, I
selected one and ended up with the complete theme loaded into the
home/mythtv/ directory instead of the /usr/local/share directory.

I cleaned that up and got things back to where they had been and when I
reloaded the frontend, I ended up with the Tera theme and could not get the
blue-abstract-wide theme back. It wasn't until I deleted the
blue-abstract-wide directory from /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes directory that
things went back to normal. I assume that happened because, lacking a
working theme, the frontend defaults to the Tera theme?

Since then, I have been making changes directly to the blue-abstract-wide
theme residing in the /usr/local/share/mythtv/themes directory although that
is not optimum as my changes will get wiped out each time I update.

Obviously I have something screwed up either in my configuration or in my
interpretation of the instructions for testing.

Any suggestions?

-- Ken E.

Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

killerkiwi2005 at gmail

Jul 31, 2011, 11:52 PM

Post #2 of 7 (3513 views)

Permalink

On 1 August 2011 16:20, Kenneth Emerson <kenneth.emerson@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm new to theme programing, but trying to learn. I currently use the
> blue-abstract-wide theme and wanted to make some small changes to one of the
> menus (baby steps in the learning process). Trying to follow the
> instructions on the (several) theme wikis, I created a directory in the
> mythtv user's home directory:
>
> /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes/blue-abstract-wide/
>
> Then I copied the xml file I wanted to modify to that directory. I believe
> the wiki said that the frontend will search this directory first and then
> the /usr/[local]/share/mythtv/theme directory for everything else.
>
> Well, that seemed to get mythtv and myself very confused. The first thing
> I noticed was that I now had two versions of blue-abstract-wide to choose
> from in the Theme Chooser setup menu. Not realizing what was happening, I
> selected one and ended up with the complete theme loaded into the
> home/mythtv/ directory instead of the /usr/local/share directory.
>
> I cleaned that up and got things back to where they had been and when I
> reloaded the frontend, I ended up with the Tera theme and could not get the
> blue-abstract-wide theme back. It wasn't until I deleted the
> blue-abstract-wide directory from /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes directory that
> things went back to normal. I assume that happened because, lacking a
> working theme, the frontend defaults to the Tera theme?
>
> Since then, I have been making changes directly to the blue-abstract-wide
> theme residing in the /usr/local/share/mythtv/themes directory although that
> is not optimum as my changes will get wiped out each time I update.
>
> Obviously I have something screwed up either in my configuration or in my
> interpretation of the instructions for testing.
>
> Any suggestions?
>

Copy the theme to ~/.mythth/themes/blue-abstract-modified

Change the theme name...
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUI_Theme_Development#themeinfo.xml

You can then use this to reload the theme while mythfrontend is running

kill -USR1 $(pidof mythfrontend)

Thanks what I did anyway

1 note if the XML in invalid the frontend will load the default theme as a
fall back..

~/.mythtv/themecache some times seems to need to be cleared out as well
(which im guessing is what was happening to you)
Jason Taylor

--
"Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely
pointless. " - Calven

Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

miststlkr at gmail

Aug 1, 2011, 12:16 AM

Post #3 of 7 (3519 views)

Permalink

I got my start the same way and ran into similar issues, so don't sweat it.
There are two of the same theme listed in the theme chooser because the name
that is displayed comes from the themeinfo.xml file entry, so on yours
you'll need to change the theme's name in there to tell them apart. I never
did the two different paths thing though, I would just copy
/usr/share/mythtv/themes/blue-abstract/ to
/usr/share/mythtv/themes/custom-theme/ or something similar, change the
title tag in your new themeinfo.xml and start working from there [with
frequent backups when you are tinkering!!] on your new/modified theme.

On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 23:52, Jason Taylor <killerkiwi2005@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On 1 August 2011 16:20, Kenneth Emerson <kenneth.emerson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm new to theme programing, but trying to learn. I currently use the
>> blue-abstract-wide theme and wanted to make some small changes to one of the
>> menus (baby steps in the learning process). Trying to follow the
>> instructions on the (several) theme wikis, I created a directory in the
>> mythtv user's home directory:
>>
>> /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes/blue-abstract-wide/
>>
>> Then I copied the xml file I wanted to modify to that directory. I
>> believe the wiki said that the frontend will search this directory first and
>> then the /usr/[local]/share/mythtv/theme directory for everything else.
>>
>> Well, that seemed to get mythtv and myself very confused. The first thing
>> I noticed was that I now had two versions of blue-abstract-wide to choose
>> from in the Theme Chooser setup menu. Not realizing what was happening, I
>> selected one and ended up with the complete theme loaded into the
>> home/mythtv/ directory instead of the /usr/local/share directory.
>>
>> I cleaned that up and got things back to where they had been and when I
>> reloaded the frontend, I ended up with the Tera theme and could not get the
>> blue-abstract-wide theme back. It wasn't until I deleted the
>> blue-abstract-wide directory from /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes directory that
>> things went back to normal. I assume that happened because, lacking a
>> working theme, the frontend defaults to the Tera theme?
>>
>> Since then, I have been making changes directly to the blue-abstract-wide
>> theme residing in the /usr/local/share/mythtv/themes directory although that
>> is not optimum as my changes will get wiped out each time I update.
>>
>> Obviously I have something screwed up either in my configuration or in my
>> interpretation of the instructions for testing.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>>
>
> Copy the theme to ~/.mythth/themes/blue-abstract-modified
>
> Change the theme name...
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUI_Theme_Development#themeinfo.xml
>
> You can then use this to reload the theme while mythfrontend is running
>
> kill -USR1 $(pidof mythfrontend)
>
> Thanks what I did anyway
>
> 1 note if the XML in invalid the frontend will load the default theme as a
> fall back..
>
> ~/.mythtv/themecache some times seems to need to be cleared out as well
> (which im guessing is what was happening to you)
> Jason Taylor
>
> --
> "Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely
> pointless. " - Calven
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-theming mailing list
> mythtv-theming@mythtv.org
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-theming
>
>

Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

federico.ferri at yahoo

Aug 1, 2011, 1:21 AM

Post #4 of 7 (3507 views)

Permalink

In data lunedì 1 agosto 2011 08:52:58, Jason Taylor ha scritto:
> On 1 August 2011 16:20, Kenneth Emerson <kenneth.emerson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm new to theme programing, but trying to learn. I currently use the
> > blue-abstract-wide theme and wanted to make some small changes to one of the
> > menus (baby steps in the learning process). Trying to follow the
> > instructions on the (several) theme wikis, I created a directory in the
> > mythtv user's home directory:
> >
> > /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes/blue-abstract-wide/
> >
> > Then I copied the xml file I wanted to modify to that directory. I believe
> > the wiki said that the frontend will search this directory first and then
> > the /usr/[local]/share/mythtv/theme directory for everything else.
> >
> > Well, that seemed to get mythtv and myself very confused. The first thing
> > I noticed was that I now had two versions of blue-abstract-wide to choose
> > from in the Theme Chooser setup menu. Not realizing what was happening, I
> > selected one and ended up with the complete theme loaded into the
> > home/mythtv/ directory instead of the /usr/local/share directory.
> >
> > I cleaned that up and got things back to where they had been and when I
> > reloaded the frontend, I ended up with the Tera theme and could not get the
> > blue-abstract-wide theme back. It wasn't until I deleted the
> > blue-abstract-wide directory from /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes directory that
> > things went back to normal. I assume that happened because, lacking a
> > working theme, the frontend defaults to the Tera theme?
> >
> > Since then, I have been making changes directly to the blue-abstract-wide
> > theme residing in the /usr/local/share/mythtv/themes directory although that
> > is not optimum as my changes will get wiped out each time I update.
> >
> > Obviously I have something screwed up either in my configuration or in my
> > interpretation of the instructions for testing.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
> >
>
> Copy the theme to ~/.mythth/themes/blue-abstract-modified
>
> Change the theme name...
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUI_Theme_Development#themeinfo.xml
>
> You can then use this to reload the theme while mythfrontend is running
>
> kill -USR1 $(pidof mythfrontend)
>
> Thanks what I did anyway
>
> 1 note if the XML in invalid the frontend will load the default theme as a
> fall back..
>
> ~/.mythtv/themecache some times seems to need to be cleared out as well
> (which im guessing is what was happening to you)
> Jason Taylor
>
>
i add a tip:
if you run mythfrontend from terminal whith this command "mythfrontend -v gui,extra,osd" you will se some interesting log..

bye, Federico

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Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

managementboy at gmail

Aug 1, 2011, 4:19 AM

Post #5 of 7 (3513 views)

Permalink

Hi Ken,

as many have already noted:

1) copy a working theme from /usr/share/mythtv/originalthemetitle to
/usr/share/mythtv/yournewthemetitle

2) edit the themeinfo.xml file in your favorite editor and change the title
there to any you like. This is the title later shown in your frontend.

3) start learning some of the basics by editing small things (one at a time)
in the file base.xml. This file is used as the "root" of all themes. Most
themes then inherit the settings made here into the subsections (also called
screens) like recordings.

4) comment everything you have learned (with ) as it allows you to relearn it fast if you don't edit the file
often.

5) make use of the http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUI_Theme_Development wiki.
It contains up to date information on what settings can be used in each
screen.

6) don't get frustrated, as some screens (mythmusic comes to mind) is not
fully converted to the new MythUI way of theming.

7) set a keybinding to reload the theme, that way you don't have to "kill
-USR1 $(pidof mythfrontend)" all the time.

8) sometimes you need to clear the theme cache to make your changes visible
(rm ~/.mythtv/themecache/* -r)

Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

mtdean at thirdcontact

Aug 1, 2011, 6:54 AM

Post #6 of 7 (3504 views)

Permalink

On 08/01/2011 02:52 AM, Jason Taylor wrote:
> You can then use this to reload the theme while mythfrontend is running
>
> |kill -USR1 $(pidof mythfrontend)|
>

Note that there's also a jump point called 'Reload Theme' to which you
can bind a key.

Mike
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Re: How to set up a test bed for a theme [ In reply to ]

mtdean at thirdcontact

Aug 1, 2011, 7:02 AM

Post #7 of 7 (3506 views)

Permalink

On 08/01/2011 12:20 AM, Kenneth Emerson wrote:
> I'm new to theme programing, but trying to learn. I currently use the
> blue-abstract-wide theme and wanted to make some small changes to one
> of the menus (baby steps in the learning process). Trying to follow
> the instructions on the (several) theme wikis, I created a directory
> in the mythtv user's home directory:
>
> /home/mythtv/.mythtv/themes/blue-abstract-wide/
>
> Then I copied the xml file I wanted to modify to that directory. I
> believe the wiki said that the frontend will search this directory
> first and then the /usr/[local]/share/mythtv/theme directory for
> everything else.

This is the way MythTV used to work, but it no longer does so. It now
expects a theme directory to contain all the theme files--and anything
not found there is searched for only in default-wide and/or default, as
appropriate. So, all the suggestions to copy the entire theme directory
are exactly right.

This makes more sense, now, with the reasoning that MythTV themes should
be installed in the user theme dir ($HOME/.mythtv/themes/) by the Theme
Chooser rather than installed into a system directory
($PREFIX/share/mythtv/themes). Ideally, one day, only a default and
default-wide theme will be installed into system directories and all
others will be in user dirs.

Please feel free to update the wiki. (IIRC, it's been like this since
0.22, so no need to maintain info on the old style.)

Mike
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