2016-06-16, 22:55
Huge applauds for anyone who wants to learn skinning and, as someone who is your senior in years, believe me when I say that if I can do it then so can you 
Conq is a fantastic skin to learn from. I can't honestly say the same is necessarily true of igConq - things like the widgets use a far more complex system than Conq (utilising Skin Shortcuts Templates feature, which the author of Conq - a genuinely skilled skinner - is on record as saying confuse him!), and I haven't spent the same time making sure everything is commented or even shared when necessary between windows.
However, I suspect your aim isn't to learn how to create a whole skin but rather than extend the brilliance that is Nox Silvo/MadNox - as such I'd highly recommend looking at what changes you want to make to the relevant skin, and (1) find out where in the skin that is (2) Find out where that fits into the whole skin structure (is it one of the general xml files, is it done via an include, etc) (3) play around until you can break it (4) Fix it - but fix it as YOU want to see it.
My other advice would be to make use of the community. You already know how strong the Nox community is - they'll help you find out where in the code the changes you want to make are (though, if you truly want to understand skinning, you still need to understand how the place they tell you to make the changes fits into the skin as a whole...). If your changes relate to the main menu, I'll answer any and all Skin Shortcuts question you have - and other scripters are just as happy.
The biggest challenge I ever faced, though, is finding out the limitations of the skinning engine. Once you start to get a grip on that, knowing what you want to do via skinning is simple (and finding where to do it becomes so with practice.) Start to get out of that zone, though, and you either need to combine Python with your skinning efforts, or scale back your ambitions - and that can be a difficult line to walk
Conq is a fantastic skin to learn from. I can't honestly say the same is necessarily true of igConq - things like the widgets use a far more complex system than Conq (utilising Skin Shortcuts Templates feature, which the author of Conq - a genuinely skilled skinner - is on record as saying confuse him!), and I haven't spent the same time making sure everything is commented or even shared when necessary between windows.
However, I suspect your aim isn't to learn how to create a whole skin but rather than extend the brilliance that is Nox Silvo/MadNox - as such I'd highly recommend looking at what changes you want to make to the relevant skin, and (1) find out where in the skin that is (2) Find out where that fits into the whole skin structure (is it one of the general xml files, is it done via an include, etc) (3) play around until you can break it (4) Fix it - but fix it as YOU want to see it.
My other advice would be to make use of the community. You already know how strong the Nox community is - they'll help you find out where in the code the changes you want to make are (though, if you truly want to understand skinning, you still need to understand how the place they tell you to make the changes fits into the skin as a whole...). If your changes relate to the main menu, I'll answer any and all Skin Shortcuts question you have - and other scripters are just as happy.
The biggest challenge I ever faced, though, is finding out the limitations of the skinning engine. Once you start to get a grip on that, knowing what you want to do via skinning is simple (and finding where to do it becomes so with practice.) Start to get out of that zone, though, and you either need to combine Python with your skinning efforts, or scale back your ambitions - and that can be a difficult line to walk
