[mikeSiLVO]

I have started work on integrating Skin Shortcuts support.

This is a test release and I am using a different skin ID for this new version so both the original Transparency! skin and this "SS Edition" can live side by side.

Many things have been removed so something may have broken along the way.

Let me know of any issues :)

New release zips can be found HERE!

CLICK ASSETS AND SELECT THE FIRST ZIPFILE LISTED
i.e. skin.transparency.ssedition-x.x.x.zip

[kurai]

Hi@mikeSiLVO

Tried (briefly) the Skins Shortcut Edition - didn't find anything obviously broken in my quick skip around the features 
(other than some missing things like the Home Screen multi-art displays for TV/Movies/Music etc, but you did mention removals, so not entirely unexpected  )

After switching back to `regular` Transparency I noticed that spinning discart was not showing for audio playback - just the standard blank spinning disc image.

Looking at a debug log I can't find the player process even looking for a discart.png image. (But I don't have a successful instance debug.log, so no idea if that is even something logged)

I don't *think* I changed anything else in Kodi and/or Transparency settings in the last few weeks that wold affect the discart display but can't be 100% sure.

Might there be something in the userdata\guisettings.xml that the SS Edition caused to be changed that would persist after switching skins back, or am I chasing red herrings and should be looking elsewhere ?

[mikeSiLVO]

Hi@mikeSiLVO

Tried (briefly) the Skins Shortcut Edition - didn't find anything obviously broken in my quick skip around the features 
(other than some missing things like the Home Screen multi-art displays for TV/Movies/Music etc, but you did mention removals, so not entirely unexpected  )

After switching back to `regular` Transparency I noticed that spinning discart was not showing for audio playback - just the standard blank spinning disc image.

Looking at a debug log I can't find the player process even looking for a discart.png image. (But I don't have a successful instance debug.log, so no idea if that is even something logged)

I don't *think* I changed anything else in Kodi and/or Transparency settings in the last few weeks that wold affect the discart display but can't be 100% sure.

Might there be something in the userdata\guisettings.xml that the SS Edition caused to be changed that would persist after switching skins back, or am I chasing red herrings and should be looking elsewhere ?

Home screen fanart selection was moved to the Setup the main menu option in Skin Settings > Menu





All skin settings are stored in addon_data:
skin.transparency folder for Kodi repo version of the skin

skin.transparency.ssedition for this WIP version

I can't think of any reason for cd art to stop working other than the item not having discart associated with it.

[kurai]

Home screen fanart selection was moved to the Setup the main menu option in Skin Settings > Menu

Aaah - nice one. I only gave the Shortcuts setup a pretty cursory looksee. A mixture of "that looks like a *lot* of work to setup how I would want" laziness, and struggling to think of anything I wanted to achieve with it that I didn't already have in base skin.
One big advantage that I can see is that it's a lot more logically constructed and flexible than the various methods Ronie was forced to come up with to work around the limitations of Kodi's skinning engine historically.
I think deciding what I actually *want*, rather than making do with what I *have*, and setting it all up will be a project for (several) rainy days.
 

All skin settings are stored in addon_data:
skin.transparency folder for Kodi repo version of the skin

skin.transparency.ssedition for this WIP version

I can't think of any reason for cd art to stop working other than the item not having discart associated with it.

I knew that the specific instances of settings.xml for the different skin IDs would be independent, but I've run into issues before where reskins of some Kodi controls/functions being handled oddly by skins generated changes in common guisettings.xml, rather than being isolated to skin's own settings.xml

As it turned out, it was another example of me half-assing the testing. Sorry  
Somehow MyMusic83.db only has records for 147 discarts now, out of >2000 albums, even though 1420 have discart.png present in dir ... huh ??
Of course Murphy's Law dictated that the handful of albums I examined in player with debug, after noticing the `error`, were ones missing the DB discart entry. 
Did a rescan of the music source, and things seem to have repopulated correctly.  Still have zero clue what the hell might have gone on that ended up with lumps chewed out of the music database, but at least it's fixed now 

[mikeSiLVO]

New update!

The biggest change is reworking and moving most widgets to the main menu customizer, I also added some new options.

I think I have the foundation pretty solid so if there are some widget options anyone thinks are missing, let me know.

I still need to add the TV (recordings) and the System info widgets to the customizer. They are still available but enabled using the original buttons and are tied to the default TV and Settings home menu items. If you deleted those then the widget won't be able to appear until their respective main menu item is restored.

Transparency! (Skin Shortcuts Edition)

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Looking at the change diff reminded me of a quick question I wanted to ask:-
Do you know of any way to force a default proportional font (e.g. teen-normal.ttf in this case) into something akin to pseudo-monospace, or otherwise handle the font spacing of a control/label ?
I'm thinking of the Storage tab from Settings/System Info (1080p/SettingsSystemInfo.xml), which seems to just print a direct dump of (in my case)

Code:

# df -h /dev/nvme0n1p*

Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1         1000.0M    247.1M    752.9M  25% /flash
/dev/nvme0n1p2          100.0G      6.3G     93.6G   6% /storage

With a proportional font the layout is horrible.

I know it's a very minor thing, but it's been bugging me for years 

[mikeSiLVO]

You’d have to add a mono space ttf and a corresponding font addition to the font.xml file.

Speaking of fonts, I am not a fan of the one used in the skin and am open to changing it to something else entirely, like noto or another robust and freely available font…

[kurai]

Yep, exactly.  A couple of years ago the irritation built enough that I actually did something about it.  With ... limited success.
I tracked down the original source of the teen-normal font (which, let's be honest, is rather obscure and pretty weird from a typography point of view).
No monospaced version exists and a good few hours of searching didn't find anything properly built as monospaced that looked sufficiently close.
I tried a couple of alternatives for a few weeks, but eventually the irritation of one screen looking different from the entire rest of the skin outweighed the annoyance of the spacing, so I reverted to stock

I'd certainly be open to changing (or adding an alternative) font - the best thing I can say about teen-normal is ... I'm used to it.  I guess.
Damned by faint praise 

EDIT:
NotoSansDisplay-Regular looks pretty good, and is a reasonable match for height and spacing. I'll leave it installed for a couple of days and see how I feel.

[mikeSiLVO]

NotoSansDisplay-Regular looks pretty good, and is a reasonable match for height and spacing. I'll leave it installed for a couple of days and see how I feel.

I started another branch with Skin Shortcuts and replaced the default font with Noto Sans Display.

Transparency! (Skin Shortcuts Edition) New Font

Random Screenshots for opinions on font choice, including size and position.

[kurai]

NotoSansDisplay-Regular looks pretty good, and is a reasonable match for height and spacing. I'll leave it installed for a couple of days and see how I feel.

Random Screenshots for opinions on font choice, including size and position.

That looks a little skinny to me - rather than the full (1.5Mb) "NotoSansDisplay-VariableFont_wdth,wght.ttf" package I used the (351k) "static/NotoSansDisplay-Regular.ttf" sub-type.
I'm not sure how Kodi would go about selecting a Style sub-type from within a monolithic `OpenType Font Variations` bundle - it seems to only understand the basic `normal, bold, italics, bolditalics, lowercase, uppercase, capitalize, lighten` render notations.
The Google font bundles have specific named Styles, eg. Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold, Black equating to weights (100 to 900).

Kodi seems to have picked the first sub-style available,Thin (weight equivalent 100) to use.  IMO I think the chunkier Regular (weight equivalent 400) fits better for a "10-foot UI" on a TV.
YMMV for other display types.

[mikeSiLVO]

I used fonttools to make a 400 weight but it didn't look very different so I made a new one using 500 weight and replaced the one in the new branch. Try that one out when you get a chance.

[matty129]

Any chance you would consider building in support for the GUI in 21:9 aspect ratio (Cinemascope)? 2.40, 2.37, 2.35, 1.78.

The OSMC default skin has a "Cinemascope" version that handles it really well, but the overall look and feel doesn't compare in my opinion.

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Did you grab the full zip pack from Google Fonts - Noto Sans ?  Possibly more reliable to grab the individual weight types from the /static folder in Noto_Sans.zip

EDIT:
Ignore the previous bits of half-thought out font-nonsense. I was eyeballing your screenshots and comparing to my local install, while dropping in new fonts & restarting. Didn't take into account the size & offset changes in Font.xml, Settings.xml etc.
Sorry - that's what I get for fiddling with fonts while tired enough to fall asleep at desk 
I'll tinker again, more carefully, now that I'm a bit more awake.

[kurai]

*sigh*
Don't play with code and detailed layouts when over-tired, folks.  It's the same as being drunk.
One of the things I was getting too hung up on last night was the truncating-to-ellipse of one of my custom Home menu items.
Instead of endlessly futzing with fine detail of fonts and spacings I should have just ... used the INBUILT SKIN SETTING for Wide Home Menu buttons. 

@mikeSiLVO The Noto Sans Display, 500 weight, 100 width looks good to me.

[Mordred]

I just noticed today that this was out of the graveyard, and gotta say thanks for the awesome work mikeSilvo! I had a couple question/suggestions after reading through the thread:

1. I was going to ask how to re-enable recently added for movies/TV/etc. but figured it out while writing this. Should that be set back to be enabled by default?
2. In previous Transparency I had season fanart.jpg in my "Season XX" folders which would override the shows primary background. Is there anyway to get this to work again? Seems it was disabled when my previous T! auto updated to 13.0.0.
3. I tried out the font change branch and for some reason Noto Sans just looks wrong to me in this interface. Texts in lists (like of movies in the fanart view) seems thinner than it used to. It's entirely possible that it's just that it looks different to the font I've been looking at for the past 8+ years, which is why I don't like it. I do wonder if Roboto at 400 or 500 might be better than Noto. As an android user that feels like a more "neutral" sans to me.
4. I think the giant "RECENTLY ADDED MOVIES" is a bit much as it dwarfs the movies/shows listed below. I kinda liked the "NEW" that was there before.