[Jayz2K]

Hey there

After some tryouts and background talks about the project here : http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2269312 , job has produced enough good results to post it here.

No need to make a long speech ... it's what you can except by reading the title.
And because real preview is better than explainations, here we go :





I mostly worked on the process and many things have to be tuned, so first videos can make you feel lost. I'm trying to make it as intuitive as possible and rewrite it as much as needed, so don't blame me at this point of dev

I would like to adress my huge thanks to Marcelveldt for the "constants" stuffs development. This is only possible thanks to his coding talent and requests replies

Note : this is a heavy dev, mostly on the ergonomy side, so please don't ask for release timeline ... no idea I'll keep you informed.

[Jayz2K]

[joeyd2424]

Some truly beautiful stuff happening ! Great work !

[sualfred]

I'm still don't want to know what kind of drugs you take to achieve such complex things with our simple skinning engine. Chapeau, mate!

[Jayz2K]

Thx guys ...

I'm still don't want to know what kind of drugs you take to achieve such complex things with our simple skinning engine. Chapeau, mate!

Kryptonite :p

[mgonzales]

Simply *amazing* work!

Kodi skins are no longer what they used to be.

All the ground breaking hard work done by Jayz2k (Kover/ReKOver), Marcel (Titan, Skin Helper), Unfledged (Skin Shortcuts), and others with the current skin engine in Kodi is crazy!

Imagine what the future holds once the skin engine in Kodi evolves to embrace and further extend all this (and more)! :-)

What will be really cool is when Kodi and the Skin Engine have access an HTML Layout Engine (WebKit) that will make it easy for users to post/share/use all these skin customizations from the Kodi App itself.

Can't wait.

Look forward to playing with ReKOver once it is available.

Want to give a big thanks to you and all the devs for their hard work!



Mario

[Jayz2K]

@mgonzales :

Thx

What will be really cool is when Kodi and the Skin Engine have access an HTML Layout Engine (WebKit) that will make it easy for users to post/share/use all these skin customizations from the Kodi App itself.

I don't really know about this webkit but I imagine this is something similar to what I'm targeting. I found some interesting processes while learning the code and developing KOver, and I just use the same in ReKOver but in a reverse way. For KOver, I made a skin and then a tool to control the customization ... what got me stuck into it's own layout. For ReKOver, I'm skipping the skin part and made a tool to rebuild exploded controls assuming they all have a similar structure. The result is finally an astonishingly lightweight code since there's only 1 text / texbox control, 1 image / multiimage control and 1 lists control. The Designer is the heaviest part (also, not that much) which is gathering the values to "compile" controls as much as they are defined in the designer. Keeping this in mind, it "should" also be easy to backup / restore those settings using Skin.Helper feature (meaning sharing / install users setup).

This will never be as powerful as typing pure code but I will try to make it as complete as possible to allow to build a fully working simple skin. While developping a skin, I think skinners, like me, get plenty of new design ideas making the job even longer rewrites after rewrites. This could be a great start to sketch ideas before going deeper into functionalities or just build a simple overlay for fun inside KOver ... not in monthes or years, but days or weeks without a single line of code ! It could also be a good learning start for coding too because I plan to add ALL KODI / Skin.Helper infolabels and basics. Finally it could just give design access to anyone who doesn't want to start coding.
I may seem too enthusiastic, but testing the designer along the road, trust me, I have some reasons to
My only regret now is that it's still a skin (I have no python skills), adding a second skinning level.

[djoole]

Jay, on the performance side, have you made some tests, building complete layout/views?
If so, does it load well? Faster/Slower than Kover?

[Jayz2K]

Jay, on the performance side, have you made some tests, building complete layout/views?
If so, does it load well? Faster/Slower than Kover?

Good question !!! Right now it's hard to tell. I'm not in the background of the skinning engine and it's not possible for me to identify if the number of strings / constants slows down the loading of viewtypes and / or conditions. For sure, the answer could be "BOTH" but in which proportions ? Right now, I'm working on the designer that populate a "model" viewtype. This viewtype is nothing more than the "REAL" viewtype which will be used in KODI sections (filled in the designer by a vfs path) and actually loads in an instant. But KODI has to actually read only the settings / constant for the model because I didn't dispatch those to multiple viewtypes and I didn't calculate how much settings it will produce (compared to KOver, it can reach tens of thousands for sure). But the good point is the constant stuffs allow me to make a direct read of the value instead of a large number of insanely long and complex conditions (what I supsect to be the main issue in KOver). Time will give us an answer

[djoole]

OK, thanks for the answer

[hansl]

Hi Jayz2K, it's been awfully quiet the last few weeks I've been lurking in the KOver forum for some time and always enjoyed your progress updates... Any news on the status of ReKover? Maybe some new shiny features?

Keep up the good work!

Cheers
hansl

[Jayz2K]

Hi Jayz2K, it's been awfully quiet the last few weeks I've been lurking in the KOver forum for some time and always enjoyed your progress updates... Any news on the status of ReKover? Maybe some new shiny features?

Keep up the good work!

Cheers
hansl

Hi, indeed ...
The fact is recent professional and personal events made me to put devs on hold for some time. I admit I did not progress on it since last Updates and have no time for it. I'm confident things will calm down but I have priorities actually and can't say for how long. ReKOver project is still a challenge I would like to achieve and dear to my heart but it's also time consuming and something I need to be fully concentrated on because of the logic and ergonomy behind. I really hope to put my hands in again ASAP.

Cheers

[hansl]

Hi, indeed ...
The fact is recent professional and personal events made me to put devs on hold for some time. I admit I did not progress on it since last Updates and have no time for it. I'm confident things will calm down but I have priorities actually and can't say for how long. ReKOver project is still a challenge I would like to achieve and dear to my heart but it's also time consuming and something I need to be fully concentrated on because of the logic and ergonomy behind. I really hope to put my hands in again ASAP.

Cheers

Understandable, but still... aaaaaaaaawwww!

All the best!

[djoole]

Hey Jayz, just to let you know support's still there when you're ready to come back

[Saner]

Real life should always take priority.