[mythtv-theming] background for Setup / General screen

Paul Harrison mythtv at sky.com
Sat Dec 29 11:15:10 UTC 2012


On 29/12/12 04:27, Joey Morris wrote:
> I was trying to change the  background image for my theme, and I
 > noticed that the new image wasn't being picked up in some of the
 > Setup screens, for example General and Appearance. After some trial
 > and error, I finally realized that those screens look for their
 > background image in themeroot/background.png. It doesn't appear that
 > I can change this path in my theme. (I had reorganized things to move
 > all the images, including background.png, to an images subdirectory.
 > As a result, those screens could no longer find their background
 > image.)
 >
 > I'm assuming this is because those screens haven't been updated to
 > MythUI yet. I'm still on 0.25. Have they been updated in 0.26? I
 > didn't see it mentioned in the release notes. If there are no
 > imminent plans to update these screens to MythUI, I might add
 > something to the wiki about this.

I think you can change the location of the background for the old Qt 
screens like the settings screens in your themes qtlook.txt. Take a look 
at the one in MythCeneter-wide for an example. I say think because I'm 
not a themer so have no idea if this still works as intended.

>
 > My original goal was not to use a background image at all. I just
 > wanted a solid black background. My first attempt was to define the
 > backgroundwindow window in base.xml to contain a solid black shape
 > widget. That worked fine for most screens. However, on those Setup
 > screens, the lack of an actual image caused problems. As I cycled
 > through the various screens in General, the widgets from the
 > previous screens did not go away. The widgets from the new screen
 > were simply drawn on top of the old ones, which quickly became a
 > mess.

Most of the settings screens haven't been updated to use MythUI yet so 
you are stuck to defining the background in two different places for the 
moment. There is no reason why you can't have two different background 
images if that is what you want or use an image for the old Qt screens 
and a shape for the MythUI ones.

>
 > So the moral of the story seems to be: Create an image to use as the
 > background, even if your desired background can be accomplished with
 > a shape widget. In addition, don't get cute with the location of the
 > image, just store it in themeroot/background.png (maybe it will also
 > look for background.jpg).
 >
 > Can anyone confirm that my understanding of all this is correct?
 >

Yes for the old settings screens you are stuck to using an image for the 
moment you should be able to define where to look for the image though.

There is a patch on http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/10092 that will 
eventually convert all the old Qt settings screens to MythUI but it's 
been sitting in trac for so long it no longer applies cleanly. I wanted 
to give it a try but there are so many failed hunks in the patches it 
will be difficult to bring it up to date. I contacted Xavier to see if 
he has an up to date patch but he doesn't and is away for a couple of 
weeks but said he will try to look at it when he gets back. It will be 
sad to see all that hard work going to waste because no one can be 
bothered to review it? Sadly I think we are seeing the beginning of the 
end of the MythTV project if no one steps up to inject some life back 
into it :(

Paul H.



More information about the mythtv-theming mailing list