[wyrm]

Hi guys,

After updating the family AppleTV to 12.2 today, I have discovered that I can no longer access from within XBMC playlists that I have included previously with my skin. When I first included these playlists with the skin I was looking after custom home menu items with a private custom script (since replaced with the script.favourites script to allow skin to become repo compliant). Under Eden you could still get to the files (located in a extras/playlist directory within my skins file structure) via the file manager or even from the Files node of the library, but this would no longer appear to be the case.

Does anyone include custom playlists (for example in my skin I have included Adults/Childrens Movies and TVShows, Movie shorts and other assorted useful playlists) within their skin that users can easily make a favourite (and then use favourites script to add to the home screen)? Really I'm looking for something that will either present a list of my custom playlists to the user, or maybe a way to copy my playlist over to the XBMC's list of playlists.

Any idea's?

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[butchabay]

I'm doing it the same way in my new skin i'm working on, and it works as expected.
See my signature skin.dawn for some screenshots

[wyrm]

I'm doing it the same way in my new skin i'm working on, and it works as expected.
See my signature skin.dawn for some screenshots

butchabay,

Nice, where the heck do you get the time to work on these skins?

I think you may have misunderstood me a little. What I'm trying to allow is for the user to assign a playlist (from a number of pre-made playlists supplied with the skin) to a Home menu sub menu item. At this stage I'm leaning towards the idea of asking the user if they wish to assign a Favourite or Playlist to a custom home menu item and then show a SelectFile type dialog (using Skin.SetFile function) with the location of my playlists preset if they select "Playlist".

Just seems a little crude to me, I'm open to better ideas.
Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[butchabay]

Nice, where the heck do you get the time to work on these skins?

I think you may have misunderstood me a little. What I'm trying to allow is for the user to assign a playlist (from a number of pre-made playlists supplied with the skin) to a Home menu sub menu item. At this stage I'm leaning towards the idea of asking the user if they wish to assign a Favourite or Playlist to a custom home menu item and then show a SelectFile type dialog (using Skin.SetFile function) with the location of my playlists preset if they select "Playlist".

Just seems a little crude to me, I'm open to better ideas.
Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

Know it's clear, sorry ... crude ? It's a nice idea and makes it custom friendly ... but if you're saying it worked with eden, i can't understand what changed in that direction for frodo, haven't seen any changes.

So let me see if i understand:

1. Customer will be asked to choose a predifined smartplaylist
2. If confirmed, a list of your own created playlists will be listet
3. Customer selects a playlist, let's say CHILDREN which is located in the skin folder playlists/children.xsp
4. Dialog asking where to put this playlist Home Menu or Submenu
5. Done

Is that right ?

[nessus]

@wyrm
I am using a same option for the Custom Panels on Xperience More and is working fine with Frodo.

Here is the code that i am using in skin settings.


Cheers
Nessus

[wyrm]

@butchabay & nessus,

Thanks for the reply's guys. On the what's changed question, here is a run down on how I got to the current point.

Dharma :- my skin has a number of scripts included with the skin that looks after custom addons and playlists on home menu. Repo guardians will not accept skin into Main repo as a result.

Eden :- Changed skin to use the favourites script, now accepted into main repo. This script still allows me to ship the skin with the playlist from my Dharma builds of the skin as user can still navigate to where the playlists are stored in my skin folder and make the playlists favourites. In some ways, not as friendly as Dharma builds of skin, but still useful.

Frodo :- No longer allows user to navigate to any directory within my skin folder (via file manager or File node of library), so user currently has no access to the included playlists. This is probably a good thing as users can't mess-up or see skin code (much cleaner user view of XBMC filesystem).

So as I have just discovered I need to make a major change to how playlists are accessed within the skin for users to be able to continue to assign the playlists I have included into the home menu. As far as I can see my options are:

1 - On the skin setting page that deals with custom home menu items I need to include a toggle button for either Favourite or playlist for the current custom menu slot. Then if a playlist, show a selection dialog with the skins playlists directory as default location and assign appropriate strings to the existing skin strings from the favourites script.

2 - As above but instead of a toggle button to select favourite or playlist, bring up a custom yes/no type dialog with favourite or playlist as options.

3 - Write a script to move the playlists from my skins extras directory to the system playlist directory and submit the script to the main repo. Not even sure if this would be accepted or even if I am capable of writing such a script, but it does have the advantage that it most closely matches what was happening under Eden (better in fact as user does not need to know to look in my skins extras folder for the playlists).

So I think 1 and 2 are crude mainly because I'm asking the user to decide between two things instead of just one (playlist or favourite instead of just a favourite that the user previously assigned). That and I am re-purposing the skin strings assigned by the favourites scripts which I think is not real nice. Also these options are adding complexity to the skin when I am busily trying to remove it.

Either way this change will involve a bit of work, so I'm looking for your thoughts on what will be a better way to proceed. Do you think anyone (yourselves included) would be interested in using a general script for moving skin content into XBMC's system filespace (if it is even allowed)?

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[`Black]

You say "What I'm trying to allow is for the user to assign a playlist (from a number of pre-made playlists supplied with the skin) to a Home menu sub menu item". Why is that a problem? You can easily access skin files with Frodo via file browser and setpath. You can also navigate to the skin files in the file manager (users may need to add a source but I'm not sure) with Frodo.

I would go for two options in the skin settings. It's much easier for the users than if they must go into the filemanager, navigate to the skin files and add the playlists as a favourite. While you need to add a description for the latter, the former should be clear to everyone.