260 replies to this topic

[BuGless]

Can anyone tell me the name of that screen so I can provide a proper template for it?
I tried finding it myself, but amongst the myriad of DVD-related screens I kind of got lost.

It's a screen from the skin_default, meaning that this screen is not available in the active skin.

Yes, I figured as much already, but what name does it have?

[Rob van der Does]

I think it must be 'DVDPlayer'.

[Rob van der Does]

The premise of a proper UI is simple: ask all clueless users to tell you what they would have expected if they were to press these buttons at this point; if you get a >90% score of the same action, implement it. The best UIs don't need explanations or documentation. But I'll keep your remarks in mind, if a simple method becomes available to automatically display some of those extra buttons, I'll see if I can fit them in somewhere.

For a proper UI you don't even need all those buttons. The more buttons you use, the more complex it gets.

You can operate a SKY box with 4 arrows, an Ok and a Back. And any old granny can do that. Same with for example the PS3 UI. When my parents come to visit I have an A4 next to the TV with an "how to watch TV". If you read that, you'll see how stupid it now works.

The core issue here is that Enigma is very complex in setup and the way functions are implemented. Which means workarounds have been designed, both with additional buttons and through plugins. While the core issue has never been addressed. This complex setup also makes it very difficult to actually address it, without having to redesign large parts of Enigma. Bottomline is that it's design and architecture are inheritly wrong for it's purpose.

Of course I agree with you that the setup of an E2 box is rather complicated, due to the huge amount of settings. I assume this is due to the fact that functionality has been added over and over again over the years, and never integrated. The advantage is of course that the box can be fine-tuned to ones wishes. I'm not familiar with a SKY box, but I can't imagine they can be equally set to ones wishes.

Where I don't agree is in the area of 'normal' use (being watching live-TV/Radio and making and watching recordings). I find that quite simple and straight forward, and never had any problems explaining that to anyone.
As long as people keep there fingers away from any system-menu (most of them I have hidden).

[Dream1975]

Hello again,

I updated the box today, but the txt subtitles still are too low (see enclosed). Also I noticed the cursor in the typing field in the search screen of the 1channel plugin hasn't the same height as the letters, but goes down a long way (it does have the correct height in PLi-HD).

Attached Files

•  subtitles.jpg   179.61KB   87 downloads
•  1channel.jpg   27.54KB   86 downloads

[Rob van der Does]

Two other remarks:
1- the space allowed for the labels of the colour-buttons is very small; on several screens the text doesn't fit (not just a letter, but far too small). And text-size can differ very much between languages.
2- Several mount(manager) related screens have not been skinned. If that would help you, I can look for the screen names.

[BuGless]

1- the space allowed for the labels of the colour-buttons is very small; on several screens the text doesn't fit (not just a letter, but far too small). And text-size can differ very much between languages.

We'll solve this by (eventually) using a smaller font to begin with, I think. We need auto-font-dimension-calculation code in enigma first, though.

2- Several mount(manager) related screens have not been skinned. If that would help you, I can look for the screen names.

Are those screens visited often? Or are they unwieldy in their current form?
Yes, screen names help. I deliberately deleted some screens from the PLi-HD skin because they looked like old cruft that should have been deleted a long time ago; I'm willing to resurrect them, but I need to know for which ones it's worth the effort.

[BuGless]

I updated the box today, but the txt subtitles still are too low (see enclosed).

I suspect the updates I checked in yesterday did not make it into today's version, for some reason. What does the SubtitleDisplay definition look like in your /usr/share/enigma2/PLi-Scale-HD/skin.xml file?

Also I noticed the cursor in the typing field in the search screen of the 1channel plugin hasn't the same height as the letters, but goes down a long way (it does have the correct height in PLi-HD).

What is the 1channel plugin?

[Dream1975]

I'll check when I get home.

1channel Is a very convenient plugin in which you can watch almost all movies and tv shows ever made from the internet directly on your tv (see http://openpli.org/f...eedback-please/ )

It's not in the feed because of the obvious copyright issues, but you'll find it on Google (search 1channel enigma2), or give me your mail in a PM and I'll send it to you. It's a plugin I can recommend everybody (I use it a lot).

Edited by Dream1975, 15 February 2013 - 13:25.

[WanWizard]

Of course I agree with you that the setup of an E2 box is rather complicated, due to the huge amount of settings. I assume this is due to the fact that functionality has been added over and over again over the years, and never integrated. The advantage is of course that the box can be fine-tuned to ones wishes. I'm not familiar with a SKY box, but I can't imagine they can be equally set to ones wishes.

I agree that the bigest challenge will be to find a compromise that will keep advanced users happy, while making the box usable for anyone without a university degree in ICT.

[Rob van der Does]

Of course I agree with you that the setup of an E2 box is rather complicated, due to the huge amount of settings. I assume this is due to the fact that functionality has been added over and over again over the years, and never integrated. The advantage is of course that the box can be fine-tuned to ones wishes. I'm not familiar with a SKY box, but I can't imagine they can be equally set to ones wishes.

I agree that the bigest challenge will be to find a compromise that will keep advanced users happy, while making the box usable for anyone without a university degree in ICT.

Part of that is done by carefully choosing the default values (which I think is already the case), and an other part by carefully dividing the settings within the several levels (expert/intermediate/etc). Otherwise a complete re-write of E2 would probably be needed.

[Rob van der Does]

Are those screens visited often? Or are they unwieldy in their current form?
Yes, screen names help. I deliberately deleted some screens from the PLi-HD skin because they looked like old cruft that should have been deleted a long time ago; I'm willing to resurrect them, but I need to know for which ones it's worth the effort.

I can't really speak for others, but indeed: I come there quite often.
IMHO all embedded functionality should be skinned in an image-specific skin.

Missing screens I found so far are:
Mouts-related: 'NetworkMountsMenu', 'AutoMountView', 'AutoMountEdit', 'AutoMountManager', 'UserManager', 'devicesMount', 'NetworkMountsMenu'.

Satellite-related: 'Satcan', 'PositionerSetup'.

Devicemanager-related: 'Devicelist', 'HddInfo', 'HddPartitions'.

Common Interface-related: Common interface (not sure about the exact name, might be 'CamSelectMenu').

[Dream1975]

I suspect the updates I checked in yesterday did not make it into today's version, for some reason. What does the SubtitleDisplay definition look like in your /usr/share/enigma2/PLi-Scale-HD/skin.xml file?

I think so also. The subtitles, DVD skin and the resume position screen are the same as yesterday.

<screen name="SubtitleDisplay" position="fill"
backgroundColor="transparent" zPosition="-1" />

Edited by Dream1975, 15 February 2013 - 17:51.

[Dream1975]

After today's update still no difference. I think something is wrong with the update meganism of the skin.

[kocus37]

Hi BuGless

Could you improve the skin upper infobar, upper right corner where you have the resolution info and sinal strenght of satelite, there is an colision text channel name from provider when exists and satelite info, i think its better and more logical to move satelite info to uper line, to the right of sinal strenght info, and in the old Position you could add the text "OpenPLi" when there is no channel info from provider. see image link. Thanks great skin forgot to mention PLI-SCALE-HD skin...

Attached Files

•  2013-02-16 08.48.43.jpg   59.7KB   51 downloads

Edited by kocus37, 16 February 2013 - 11:38.

[BuGless]

After today's update still no difference. I think something is wrong with the update meganism of the skin.

I can confirm that. I'm currently arguing with bitbake how this is supposed to work. It's a bit unclear why/how it worked the first time.

[Rob van der Does]

In the meantime can you post the files here?
Or add your GiT to your signature: I seem to have lost the address.

[BuGless]

In the meantime can you post the files here?
Or add your GiT to your signature: I seem to have lost the address.

git://devel.cuci.nl/enigma2-skin-pli-scale-hd

The branch master is what is supposed to be in the standard release.
The branch BuGless is where I work and test on (no guarantees there).
There are a lot of nitty-gritty "copyright" patches the past two days, do not mistake that for an obsession with copyright, it's just that I had to make small "meaningful" changes to try and check if bitbake was willing to accept and fetch/bake an update.

[Rob van der Does]

Thanks, made a proper clone now.

Just out of curiosity: why not an open-gnl license?

[BuGless]

Just out of curiosity: why not an open-gnl license?

You mean GPL?
Would be a possibility too. I'm a bit new at licensing things that are not strictly executable program code.
Since it's not quite a program, but more a text/design, a creative commons license seemed more appropriate.

[MiLo]

The creative commons license is a lot more restrictive to end-users than GPL. If you don't know what to pick, select GPLv2 because that is what all the rest of OpenPLi is using.