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Full Version: Adding some fonts for addon developers
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I really think the ability to allow a fallback to Confluence fonts, for any reason, would be useful. The above is a good example.

OR

A requirement that skins have at least three or four Confluence fonts in font.xml - takes 30 seconds and a lot of add-ons do look odd on specific skins.
I'd like to see more complete fallback to Confluence, like including dialogs or if possible even windows.
Anything that is missing or deemed unimportant just shows as Confluence.
This makes all skins complete by default.

Addons that come with dialogs should skin them to look like Confluence.
If this dialog is not in the 3e party skin, the addon xml thus has Confluence fonts available.
I would like to add a me too to this list. I'm being faced with all sorts of issues just trying to get a Next Up window that looks decent out of my custom skin. We REALLY need to be able to include our own fonts in the addon to present something consistent that does not force each individual skinner to create their own version of things.

Looking at the PR from 2014 looks great, it's a shame it hasn't been merged
You'll never achieve a consistent look this way. What's to be considered a XS, S, M etc. font? Surely everyone will have a different opinion on this. You'd never be able to align controls nicely. Actually even fonts of the same pixel height will differ greatly in their rendered size!

You could ask to include fonts of fixed rendered size, but that inevitably means inconsistent font sizes in properly skinned and default styled dialogs. The only real fix would be autosizing controls, very much like what you get with HTML + CSS. However even that has a drawback - while on the web scrolling is natural and pretty much a non-issue, it's less than optimal for a TV screen where certain information needs to fit into fixed bounds.

I'm sorry, but there's no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. I suppose the skin devs will simply have to add support for add-ons they deem useful enough.
(2015-06-10, 17:16)toolpunk Wrote: [ -> ]You'll never achieve a consistent look this way. What's to be considered a XS, S, M etc. font? Surely everyone will have a different opinion on this. You'd never be able to align controls nicely. Actually even fonts of the same pixel height will differ greatly in their rendered size!

You could ask to include fonts of fixed rendered size, but that inevitably means inconsistent font sizes in properly skinned and default styled dialogs. The only real fix would be autosizing controls, very much like what you get with HTML + CSS. However even that has a drawback - while on the web scrolling is natural and pretty much a non-issue, it's less than optimal for a TV screen where certain information needs to fit into fixed bounds.

I'm sorry, but there's no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. I suppose the skin devs will simply have to add support for add-ons they deem useful enough.

That´s not true, basically all problems would be solved if addon devs could define their own font styles and include their own font files.
The only problem left would be the fallback handling for missing tags (-->defaults.xml)
How would that improve UI consistency? If anything we'd end up with loads of horrible font choices.
At least they wouldn't all be font13.Wink
When I write an add-on that requires a skin, I'm not just adding some dialogs. My addon is generally an application in it's own right. UI consistency is achieved with plugins. Script add-ons are a different animal.
(2015-06-10, 18:54)toolpunk Wrote: [ -> ]How would that improve UI consistency? If anything we'd end up with loads of horrible font choices.

The main problem is not design consistency between different addons (script addons, to be exact), the main problem is that the script-addon dev cannot control 100% how his own window xmls look like on all different skins.
Not being able to control your own fonts is the #1 issue facing addon skin developers today.
(2015-06-11, 07:05)Karnagious Wrote: [ -> ]Not being able to control your own fonts is the #1 issue facing addon skin developers today.
+1
Font issues is easily the number one most reported bug for our addon. We don't care /which/ font we use; just if we could use a consistent one (confluence), we'd be thrilled. We get all sorts of layout issues by inheriting from whatever random skin the user has selected.

Until then, we're thinking about resorting to using this: https://github.com/mazkolain/xbmc-skinutils

But I'd /really/ rather a proper solution from Kodi.

---Alex
(2015-07-04, 17:27)Alexqw Wrote: [ -> ]we're thinking about resorting to using this: https://github.com/mazkolain/xbmc-skinutils

And apparently using skinutils is not kosher. The repo gatekeepers won't approve addons that use this approach (not that I blame them).

But this leaves us with no solution. All I want is to be able to use Confluence's font. I don't care about providing my own; I just want a stable font I can count on.

Is there any hope a kodi dev will take a swing at this problem?

---Alex
(2015-08-15, 20:50)Alexqw Wrote: [ -> ]Is there any hope a kodi dev will take a swing at this problem?

one can always hope...
Just my 2 cents. If an addon cannot be skinned by me (skinner), so it fits 100% into my skin, it can bugger off into oblivion! Wink
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