[mythtv-theming] MythMediaStream theme

[ajp at cantabrian.co.nz]

Hi,

 

If I could add my 2c worth.

 

I am working on a 0.25 theme for use at home. This theme is for me and my
family but I would like to make it available for others should they be
interested. I won't be updating it unless it suits me and/or my requirements
change. It may or may not be what others want but I would like to put it out
there. But I would rather not have to go through the trouble of using git,
committing and so on. Equally putting it on my personal website isn't the
best place either.  I am well used to version control but SVN no git ;-)

 

I have to say I am surprised with such a long running project popular
project that there aren't more themes. I mean just look at the tens of
thousands of themes for Wordpress - totally different kettle of fish I know
but MythTV only has maybe 22 themes. I am expecting lots of people tweak
themes but never submit the changes back because it's not as easy as it
could be. Ideally I would like to be able to submit a zip of the theme plus
screenshots. Of course in a perfect world I could submit a theme via the
frontend J

 

My theme is for 1360x768 because that's the best my frontend will do and it
has a custom menu because I need  "Recorded Programs", "Schedule" and "Live
TV" at the root menu. I also renamed "Live TV" to "TV Guide". My theme
doesn't work as well if my custom menu isn't used so I would really like
some sort of mechanism that means when you select a theme it automatically
sets a menu if that is what the themer wants - either that or prompts the
user with some sort of option.

 

Cheers

 

From: mythtv-theming-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-theming-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Ted Verhagen
Sent: Saturday, 11 August 2012 8:19 a.m.
To: mythtv-theming at mythtv.org
Subject: Re: [mythtv-theming] MythMediaStream theme

 

> > > adding the menu as well is a good idea. My upcoming blue-abstract-wide
> > > 1.8 theme will also include a menu but it will be called
> > > blue-abstract-wide-menu. So I dunno if there should be some kind of
> > > naming convention ...Menu or -menu.
> >
> > I think (but have not tested), that you can put
> > <type>Menu</type> in your UI theme's theminfo.xml file and
> > include the Menu theme .xml files in your main UI theme directory
> > and that will allow you to put them both in the same directory.
> > That's according to the comments in the themeinfo.xml file, I haven't
> > looked at the code to confirm.  Maybe Stuart Morgan or someone else
> > on the list can confirm.
>
> That's exactly how it will work. It still won't use the menu theme
> automatically, but there's no need for a separate directory as you've got
now.

What I like to contribute to this discussion/thought (taking the previous
statement of Chris into mind in regards of a separate UI to download Menu
themes or setting the menu to the 'Menu theme' included with a certain
theme) is that ideally from a user perspective, it should work like this:

 

If the theme designer has included a separate Menu with his theme, it should
be set as the default menu to be used as that particular menu was apparently
created to match the theme (like I did for the MythMediaStream theme). If
the theme designer didn't include an a menu then just left the Menu as it
is... Further more, although not many new menu themes are submitted yet, I
think its a good thing to have a separated UI for downloading menu themes as
I can imagine that sometimes people just want to arrange the way menu items
are presented to them a bit different then the way there are just now.

 

Additional question in regard to what Chris says and what Stuart confirms:
Do I understand it well that, I don't have to make a separate folder for the
Menu theme, but instead, I can just include the theme Menu .xml files into
the root directory of the theme itself and create an additional
<type>Menu</type> into the themeinfo.xml? If so this would make things a
little easier and perhaps support the idea above (i.e. a <type>OSD</type> is
also set as default once the theme is selected?)

 

Cheers, Ted.

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