[mythtv-theming] Upcoming release of v0.26

[Jim Stichnoth]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Chris Pinkham <cpinkham at bc2va.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure if all of you are aware, but we are now
> about a month away from the release of 0.26.  It would
> be nice if we could have 0.26-compatible themes available
> for download the day that 0.26 is released.  If you have
> been keeping your theme up to date with git master and
> want to have to packaged for 0.26, you can go ahead and
> create a 0.26 branch in your repos at anytime and let me
> know and I'll setup the packaging script to start
> packaging your theme(s) for MythTV 0.26.

I'd also like to remind theme writers of the new osd_subtitle.xml file
(http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Osd_subtitle.xml), which gives the theme
control over the formatting of text-based captions and subtitles.
This file is optional, and if it is not present, the system defaults
will be used (which isn't necessarily bad, as we tried to choose good
defaults).

I think the aspect with the most contention may be the subtitle
background for cc608 and external subtitles.  The default is a solid
black background, which provides consistency across cc608, cc708, and
external text subtitles.  Alternative preferences may include:

o A black background with alpha=128 (50% opacity)

o No background.  In this case, a black font outline of about 2 pixels
is recommended for decent contrast against bright backgrounds.

o Some non-MythTV players like to use yellow text (with an outline for
contrast) for external text subtitles.  But note that forcing a font
color will override any explicit color controls in the subtitle stream
(also note that in practice, such color controls are rare and
typically just used for advertising).

Some people may also detest the specific choice of fonts, so this is
another aspect for themes to pay attention to.  My only comment here
is to be sure to choose a monospaced font for the subtitle types that
expect monospacing, especially teletext which will probably look
really bad with a proportional font.

Jim