Kodi Community Forum

@guzeppi 

Hi, thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

- besides mouse control being not an intended primary control scheme for HTPC and even more so for home cinema focused skins, these redundant buttons came from a time where computer mice did not even have a "back" and "forward" button and also skins just had every element that existed on earth in them without any regards for bloating the UI.

- These optional can-be-enabled buttons also were in permanent conflict with many windows/elements since these optional "CLOSE" buttons on the top right conflicted placement-wise and caused issues since i always had do multiple avoid-overlap-variants of how to place elements in that area when this already unwanted option is enabled. It was just a pain on top.

- I did not make the decision lightly. After much reconsideration and final-days-before-removal-testing (i forced myself to enable this option again and tested multiple days for reasonability) i am now very happy that this option is gone.


Conclusion, if mouse has to be used:

- Everything these two (or three if you count the close button) optional and not recommended buttons did is done appropriately similar or better with every mouses back/forward-button (forward button could be mapped to "home" if really needed as a dedicated button).

- The otherwise still great mouse control of the Skin is already just a bonus and still exists unchanged.
On my test systems i mostly test with using a mouse and never clicked on any of the three buttons once in years. (Granted, i'm not every user on earth, of course.)


I respect that every (good and bad) user habit on earth exists and of course there may be specific use cases for some projects like for disability or similar reasons, but in this specific use case these optional buttons were just bad imho and overdue being removed.


Final tip (not that you asked : D )

- If you really want/must use mouse control, try just getting used to the back (and forward) button on the mouse. It should be easy and potentially better in the long term.
 

...and finally:

The removal makes it more likely the skin receives further updates in the future since it's already very time consuming to maintain and provide the multiple skin versions for 4 Kodi generations! :- )

Brilliant and well explained. Thanks for humouring me.

sorry for my late reply...i was just busy these days...

as for my system i use the NVIDIA Shield with latest update as well as KODI 20 from google play store.
Kodi (20.0 (20.0.0) Git:20230115-389e701cb9). Platform: Android ARM 64-bit
Release Kodi x64
Kodi compiled 2023-01-15 by Clang 9.0.9 (https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/llvm-project a2a1e703c0edb03ba29944e529ccbf457742737b) for Android ARM 64-bit API level 21 (API level 21)
Running on NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV with Android TV 11.0.0 API level 30, kernel: Linux ARM 64-bit version 4.9.141-tegra-gfad87a91fd8a


The debug log can be dowloaded here

if you need anything, just ask please

BR
snoop78

@snoopy78 Thanks. Is this a log which contain the data where the crash occurs? Did not see anything on first sight at the end of the log.

As i mentioned, it's a crash of the application and not the skin.
Besides endless other possibilities it could be a bug of Kodi regarding rendering some specific font files when trying to display such exotic characters.

Do this please:

- Disable Add-on auto updates
- Install this zip and test version of the skin:
(It has wrong fonts and looks bad - it's not for real use - just for testing. It's based on 5.4.27 + i replaced all fonts with NotoSans-Regular.ttf from Estuary):
skin.aczg-5.0.0-devtest.zip

- Check if it installed correctly (addon version should be 5.0.0 if installed correctly - be careful and have auto-updates disabled as mentioned initially to make sure the skin does _not_ just automatically updates before you start testing.)
- Check if the crash is gone while using your exotic file names/files (ignore the wrongly looking fonts of course)

- Let me know the results in detail.

Hi,

i've updated the version and did as you recommended, however, no success...

the logs can be found LOG1  && LOG2, the link with a video showing the behavior i did PM you...

(sorry for the bad pic quality, i took a picture with my smartphone from the sceen)








My guess it's that it has something to do with the fonts..

as you can see, in Estruary before the name "[][][].Song.of.the...." there are 3 rectangle characters displayed, while in Zeitgeist Confluence not ".Song.of.the...."

Estruary
"[][][].Song.of.the...."

Zeitgeist Confluence
".Song.of.the...."

@snoopy78 
Hi, i did not receive any PM.

Hi,

i've just send it again..^^
(and got a copy myself)

BR
snoopy78

@snoopy78 
This time a PM did show up in my inbox. I watched the video. Very helpful to see the issue from firsthand POV. I got a new idea. What i say is still correct: A skin is barely in the position to make an application crash. At least even with broken skin code, a application should never crash and include safety features for such situations.

What could be a possibility:

- Fonts are NOT the problem
- A problem itself are of course very likely the "exotic" characters in the file name in a basic sense
- Maybe these chcaracters cause a crash because Kodi has an issue when they are processed in the two small skin helper python addons. This should not happen and i doubt the addons itself have broken code, but i'm still willing to help with some further debugging as far as my time allows.

One thing would be very useful:
Do you have any good possibility to do the exact same test with older Kodi versions? I know it's a struggle on android since you can't have multiple versions or downgrades that easily as far as i remember, but that would be the next step for testing.

But wait, another idea:
I'll send you a second TEST SKIN ZIP
This version doesnt require the mentioned 2 skin helper addons. After installing i will ask you to disable both addons one at a time to see if the crash is gone.

Then we can go from there. ^^

(2023-02-13, 22:51)axbmcuser Wrote: [ -> ]- A problem itself are of course very likely the "exotic" characters in the file name in a basic sense

Do you think this is related... https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/22658

@Karellen 
Many thanks for the hint! Sounds very possible - just had a first quick look.

Backport link for Kodi 20: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/22659

@snoopy78 
The potential fix for Kodi has been merged into Kodi 20/Nexus yesterday. You will have to wait for a new Kodi 20.x release and then test! :- )

(2023-02-13, 23:10)axbmcuser Wrote: [ -> ]You will have to wait for a new Kodi 20.x release and then test!

Or install a nightly build.

@Karellen

Oh yes. That would surely also be a possbility. I did not check if there are nightlies for the android platform - but here you go @snoopy78 (i think you have a 64bit android system if i remember the log correctly)
https://mirrors.kodi.tv/nightlies/androi...v8a/Nexus/

Important: You'll have to wait 1 day for a new nightly build. The latest nightly from feb 12 (5ce2d74a) does _not_ have the fix yet. You'll have to wait for the next build, which should arrive shortly.

Thank you for your help....i'll wait some days and the sideload a nightly on one of my devices (i've got 3 shield Boxen, the 2015 one is now for installiert and testing purposes...)

Also i can there installiert an oder 19.x Version if needed...

@snoopy78 No worries. Let's start with the v20 nightly. No need for downgrading tests yet - at least not at this point. : D

How are you getting the widgets at the top? I like the skin but I can’t figure out the widgets thank you. I’m using it on 20 with a 4K fire stick.