[hertn]

There are two basic styles that you can change in the root skin menu, the same one where you select the skin. The default is the dark one, but there is also a white colour scheme. The dark one is not black, it's mostly transparent, with a subtle dark overlay.

You can further customise various colour settings within a chosen scheme. There are colour options throughout the Skin Settings, and also a section for various colours. You can define them through a selector menu and choose between various colour pallettes.

Keep in mind that all customisable colour entries have a transparency option as well. You can set background, selection, accent tints, panel and widget colours, etc, so it will take you a while to make everything fit just right between various colour combinations.

 Perfect! Thank you so much! I tried to change the colours before like crazy and never even thought about looking at the theme styles in the root skin menu. Thanks for a wicked theme and all your help!

[franking]

I will donate for assistance. With that being said the EMINENCE skin is what I've been using for the past 3 years and in my opinion is the best skin. But the only thing I personally miss is the option to add fonts. I've noticed that there is a process in licenses permission needed for access to the font setting. I have to admit it is a bit confusing and or just plain overwhelming for me. Please will anyone help me with this hurdle ! S.O.S Thank You.

[Alanon]

I will donate for assistance. With that being said the EMINENCE skin is what I've been using for the past 3 years and in my opinion is the best skin. But the only thing I personally miss is the option to add fonts. I've noticed that there is a process in licenses permission needed for access to the font setting. I have to admit it is a bit confusing and or just plain overwhelming for me. Please will anyone help me with this hurdle ! S.O.S Thank You.

Hello and welcome to the thread! There are several aspects to consider with regards to fonts.

As this is a non-commercial endeavour, I believe we can only use fonts in the public domain / completely free fonts / fonts with a Creative Commons or some other suitable license. Many fonts on the internet have various limitations, and I honestly don't know what policies are in practice, and what potential differences there may be between the various licences and how they tie into Kodi's purpose, or my usage of the fonts as a skinner. That being said, the fonts that are a part of the skin need to have multi language support, as there is no telling what language Kodi users will prefer to use. So it needs to cover various accents, codes, as well as various scripts, not to mention Arabic, Hindi, etc... and there simply aren't too many free fonts that cover all this, and that aren't too bad to look at.

Now, to comment more on your particular situation. There is no way to add a user-configurable setting for fonts. Every font reference used in the skin has to correspond to an entry in the proper file, along with, for example, font size, font case, etc. So in order to add a new font, one has to add a full reference list of entries into the "Font.xml" file, and then make sure that everything fits properly. That is simply how Kodi handles fonts, and that's just the limitation we have to deal with. So, if you have a font that is free, easy to read, and has many, many, many additional characters aside from Latin script, feel free to tell me, and I'll see what I can do.

However, if you wish to change a font for your own personal use, then none of the licensing troubles apply to you. If you wish to change a font yourself, perhaps to use one that only supports English, you can do that fairly easily. All you have to do is substitute the existing .ttf files in the skinfolder/fonts with new files with the same filename. This will instantly change the font throughout the skin. However, if the chosen font is very different (for example, all capital) it might be difficult to read, or some text might seem too large or too small, in which case it might be necessary to tweak the sizes of the appropriate fonts. However, if you pick a font from the same family, there is good chance of there being very little issues. Of course, the only downside to this method is that you'll have to overwrite the fonts every time after a skin update.

[franking]

Thank you     for a hasty response! 
First and foremost I appreciate* and admire the work that has been done in the Kodi community especially with the recent updates to the Eminence skin mod. 

You're explanation makes more sense to me now thank you again.
I'm fairly new to dissecting and editing xml. But, I have in the past replaced existing font with my own personal and the only way I was able to do so was through the Jason Diggz Eminence Mod which kinda made it easier for me.
The font setting was activated and I was able to add font by adding an idloc* number. I'm sure it is possible maybe because I have seen it done in the past. 

Forgive me if I'm asking to much, I'm just a Construction worker that is fascinated and would like to learn more about files, script, xml, folders ect....
I have a 17 and 15 year old boys who are starting to learn and want to learn more about the basics ins and outs of these fields and are signing up in High school electives to gain more insight. I personally feel it wont be enough.
If could ask be assisted in pointing them in the right direction maybe possibly specific support groups. It will be greatly appreciated Thanks Again!

[Alanon]

@franking, The "idloc" feature ties fonts to specific languages, so that the font names can be localised. The underlying principle of mapping fontsets in the skin Font.xml is the same. The proper way of doing things with fonts would be to create a completely new fontset in the file, and that would cause the least amount of problems. The point of this is that the skin doesn't reference actual fonts, instead it references various font names. The font.xml contains a sort of map that designs and reveals which actual fonts and settings are under a name. So in order to have a fully functioning new font in the interface, you have to have all the entries that are used in the skin properly mapped to the new font. I'm not familiar with particular Kodi builds, but if you'd like to use a font from that build, you can try and copy the font.xml file from that build into the skin itself and see if that might work.

As far as the world of coding is concerned, starting up in something like Kodi skinning is as good a start as any. HTML is not really a programming language, but it uses much of the logical underlying principles of coding syntax that can make learning more complex programming languages easier down the road. The best resource for navigating Kodi is the Wiki, which is a sort of manual - for example, you can look at this and this entry for more information on how to handle fonts in Kodi skins. If you ask me, there are always two things to look out for in situations like this, when modifying code - the first being the overall framework and the language in which you're dealing with - in this case that's Kodi itself and the hard-coded commands and references that it provides for skinners, most of which you can find on the Wiki. The second is the internal structure and syntax of every individual skin, because much of that is free-reign for the makers to organise as they deem fit.

[curael]

Hello hello, on my box the Media Info 1-4 views shows the fanart/screenshot on both screenshot and poster location of the view. Can this be fixed? Sorry if it's already mentioned. Love the mod.

Oh, and in the media flags, there are one that is always a question mark. In series, seasons abd episode views. Wonder what that one is. 🤔 Also, is it possible to have the original Eminence 2.0 media flags back? The big, white ones bleed into the next up information. 🤔 Maybe I should just change them. The biggest annoyance really is the double screenshot in Media Info views.

Thanks for all your work. I hope these issues can be resolved in due time.

[Alanon]

Hello hello, on my box the Media Info 1-4 views shows the fanart/screenshot on both screenshot and poster location of the view. Can this be fixed? Sorry if it's already mentioned. Love the mod.

Oh, and in the media flags, there are one that is always a question mark. In series, seasons abd episode views. Wonder what that one is. 🤔 Also, is it possible to have the original Eminence 2.0 media flags back? The big, white ones bleed into the next up information. 🤔 Maybe I should just change them. The biggest annoyance really is the double screenshot in Media Info views.

Thanks for all your work. I hope these issues can be resolved in due time.

The question mark is the file source, which is not the same as the used codec. The source is Web-DL, HDDVD, HDTV, etc, and should be a part of the filename. As for the flags in general, you can use the ones from the original, but I doubt that that will solve any overlap issues. The problem is not so much the size, as the number of available flags. I could try and find a way to hide the source icon if it's not in use, but I'm not sure if that would help matters much. In my experience, any overlap usually happens on films which have an abundance of additional tags and data, like IMDB top film number or MPAA rating. So it might be most prudent to disable some of the most space-consuming features, like the MPAA ratings and/or the duration flags, as that will give you more breathing room. Simply put, I don't have any bright ideas on how to solve this conundrum, space is at a premium and wherever I move something, it's bound not to make much sense.

Regarding the Media Info mismatch, on the face of it, I would guess that it's some sort of database glitch, but I'll need more information and/or Kodi logs. Does it happen only in these views? What is your setup? Does any other skin have this issue? The mechanic in the skin is rather simple and works very reliably for me, so no matter what I did, I could not reproduce your issue. The poster always takes precedence within its own space and there's nothing particularly different in the Media Info views, than, say, in the List view. Basically, there has to be a proper poster registered, cached and available in the Kodi database. If you use some network setup like an add-on or remote drive, that also might complicate retrieving the images properly. For starters, I would suggest to look up and run Artwork Beef to re-scrape your artwork from scratch, as it's the only up to date tool for the job. It might repair any glitch with the database and everything simply might start to work again.

[mattyspurs76]

Spent AllWeekend reinstalling kodi, skin, Addon, my own media.on my external drive etc.

I have noticed one unnamed addon doesn't work tm when using this skin. I click. On the Addon and nothing.... Blank, yet if I go back to estuary of even aeon silvo and titan then the Addon seems fine. What ca be causing the Addon not to show with this skin? Anything I can do at this end to fix it?

[curael]

Hello hello, on my box the Media Info 1-4 views shows the fanart/screenshot on both screenshot and poster location of the view. Can this be fixed? Sorry if it's already mentioned. Love the mod.

Oh, and in the media flags, there are one that is always a question mark. In series, seasons abd episode views. Wonder what that one is. 🤔 Also, is it possible to have the original Eminence 2.0 media flags back? The big, white ones bleed into the next up information. 🤔 Maybe I should just change them. The biggest annoyance really is the double screenshot in Media Info views.

Thanks for all your work. I hope these issues can be resolved in due time.

The question mark is the file source, which is not the same as the used codec. The source is Web-DL, HDDVD, HDTV, etc, and should be a part of the filename. As for the flags in general, you can use the ones from the original, but I doubt that that will solve any overlap issues. The problem is not so much the size, as the number of available flags. I could try and find a way to hide the source icon if it's not in use, but I'm not sure if that would help matters much. In my experience, any overlap usually happens on films which have an abundance of additional tags and data, like IMDB top film number or MPAA rating. So it might be most prudent to disable some of the most space-consuming features, like the MPAA ratings and/or the duration flags, as that will give you more breathing room. Simply put, I don't have any bright ideas on how to solve this conundrum, space is at a premium and wherever I move something, it's bound not to make much sense.

Regarding the Media Info mismatch, on the face of it, I would guess that it's some sort of database glitch, but I'll need more information and/or Kodi logs. Does it happen only in these views? What is your setup? Does any other skin have this issue? The mechanic in the skin is rather simple and works very reliably for me, so no matter what I did, I could not reproduce your issue. The poster always takes precedence within its own space and there's nothing particularly different in the Media Info views, than, say, in the List view. Basically, there has to be a proper poster registered, cached and available in the Kodi database. If you use some network setup like an add-on or remote drive, that also might complicate retrieving the images properly. For starters, I would suggest to look up and run Artwork Beef to re-scrape your artwork from scratch, as it's the only up to date tool for the job. It might repair any glitch with the database and everything simply might start to work again. 

@Alanon 

Yo! Thanks for the answer.

Alright so, I actually already have Artwork Beef - I deleted all my thumbs and the textures13.db and it solved the problem with the thumbs and poster on the "Media Info 1-4" so thanks for that. How ever, one peculiar thing: If I use that extended artwork thing where it actually shows "English from TVDB" and so on and so forth on each artwork, I can't change the poster, I mean, I can pick one but it does not update. When I go through "Information" and do the same thing and get the generic "Local/Remote art" list, it changes instantly when I pick something else. Oh well, not too important. As long as one of them actually works, you know.

Anyway man. Now that I started using the skin, I finally got Light Theme to look like what I had in OG Emi. So I have a few requests. I do understand if you don't have time for these and I also have a request regarding those media flags.

Alright. I would really appreciate an "enable/disable" file type so I can get rid of that "?" in the media flags, I simply don't du "HDTV"/"DVD"/"Blu-ray" namings. I just do straight up "Show.S01E01" namings. 

Also, any idea on how I can actually extract the OG Emi flag images from the skin? I found yours, in the "default" folder. But I can't find any inside of the Eminence 2.0 folders. Tough luck. Maybe you have an idea?

Anyway - Onto the images and the comparisons and the criticism! I hope you'll take it well, these are things that I would really like to see happen if you at all have the interest. (OG Emi first and then MOD image follows):

Browser: I'd love the "Select color around the focused object like in OG. Also, maybe a closer view to this one? See your rendition. I'd love everything on one tile. Also, the flags on this page is already really nice to have, yours just have "Unwatched" and "?", that'd be nice to implement if at all possible.



One thing I'd love to see was disabling those frames around the posters in all of the views. See information panel too. They are not in the original Eminence and I think they all unnecessary clutter and overlap each other sometimes.



Information panel: I would SO love text as the various choices here as the little squares get a little confusing. If a text/logo toggle could be enabled that'd be really swell:




OSD: I would love the OSD to have the "gradient" on top of the screen so the Title is easier, also, if possible, could you add the time and finishing time back up top as a toggle? I really like it up there instead of in the bottom left. Maybe even disabling the little bumps on top of the OSD at the bottom?





Anyway, I really love all the extra customization and I know I am asking for a lot here. And I hope you won't take any of this as insults. I am simply trying to get my way on these things. I understand if it's not possible. I really hope the shadow and time display in the OSD is possible though. And turning information buttons into text again. I understand the views could be very complicated to redesign. I just simply love that OG Emi Big Poster one so so much, it looks so sleek.

THANK YOU FOR THE SKIN! And thank you so much for your time.

Regards,
CuraeL

[Alanon]

Spent AllWeekend reinstalling kodi, skin, Addon, my own media.on my external drive etc.

I have noticed one unnamed addon doesn't work tm when using this skin. I click. On the Addon and nothing.... Blank, yet if I go back to estuary of even aeon silvo and titan then the Addon seems fine. What ca be causing the Addon not to show with this skin? Anything I can do at this end to fix it?

 I'd say that it's a problem with the add-on not declaring any content type or even trying to force a view-type that's not compatible. You can try to reset any forced views you might have in the add-on (if it supports this) or in the skin, and see if that helps. If not, you can PM me with a link to your Kodi log, and we'll see what we can do from there?

[rhoop206]

Hi - is it possible to get movie rating flags (like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, TMDb flags) to populate within the homepage widget (just as they do when clicking into my movie library).  Ideally, i'd love to see these movie flags/ratings as i'm scrolling through movies via the widget on the homepage rather than having to click into my video library to browse movies just to see their rating.  Is that doable?  If so, does anyone mind sharing with me what xml files need to be modified and what the code needs to be?  Thank you in advance for any help/guidance!

[Alanon]

Hi - is it possible to get movie rating flags (like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, TMDb flags) to populate within the homepage widget (just as they do when clicking into my movie library).  Ideally, i'd love to see these movie flags/ratings as i'm scrolling through movies via the widget on the homepage rather than having to click into my video library to browse movies just to see their rating.  Is that doable?  If so, does anyone mind sharing with me what xml files need to be modified and what the code needs to be?  Thank you in advance for any help/guidance!

You can add some entries for the ratings into the proper xml, the best place for that would be instead of the available rating: go to the Includes_Label.xml, the widget entries for the "footer" begin with line 673. Keep in mind that you'll have to use Skin Helper strings in order to get precise IMDb/RT ratings and not just what you set through your scraper (whatever rating was added into the DB through your scraper is already displayed in the widget as the item rating+votes). The main problem is that retrieval of these values is often poor due to overloaded APIs, and they often get cached improperly too.

[Alanon]

@curael Hello again! Lots of things to address here. Let me preface everything by saying that as far as your requests and comments go, you don't have to worry, I'm not averse to change or anything. I'm always looking for new things to try out or ways to improve. I'll try to give my reasoning for why some things are the way they are, and what things can be changed and how.

First off, there's a strange logic to Artwork Beef and changing any of the selected artwork. In some cases (or perhaps all) you first need to unselect whatever item was selected and then select a different one. Then it should change immediately. 

As for the source flags, I'll see if I can't find a way to make it disappear when there's no icon.   If not, I'll remove it altogether, as it's already proven to be more trouble than it's worth. Either way, it should be settled in the next update.

The original flags should be located in the skin.eminence.2/media/indicator folder. Keep in mind that not all of the icons in my mod are replacements, some of them I pulled or modified from other places in order to use them in the mod (IMDb stuff, etc), and some are simply organised slightly differently. Regardless, you need to compare them and place everything in the default folder, as that's where the white icons are.

Regarding stuff like alterations to existing views, or any particular view revamps/additions, I can't really promise anything, mostly due to time constraints, but I'm not saying no, either. It all really depends if I'll get some free time and if I'll manage to get into the groove quickly enough to make or modify anything on a larger scale.

The flags in your image look a bit weird. First, there shouldn't be a question mark but a rating flag, just like in the original? Don't really know what that's about. The rest of the info that you have in the flags below ought to be displayed in text in the upper right corner. User ratings are located below the clock in big stars and the Db ratings should be next to the date. The point of having those entries as text instead of flags (as I see it) is consistency. The skin has many, many overlapping options for displaying various flags, and it's become a very special kind of hell to try and make sure everything works without everything breaking in some unforeseen combo of options. That's one of the reasons I'm wary of making new user options.

So, for now, it's a kind of rotation scheme for most views that have some sort of info panel (like media info views or the posters list): if you disable all flags, then the MPAA rating moves up next to the date. If you disable the ratings, then they go away again. The same goes for the current rating of the item, which ought to go after the date. So you have this collection of complicated conditions for these textual entries that are the same, or try to be the same, across views, content types, etc. Plus, this grants me the room for all these flags and additional stuff. You can find most of these settings in the "Library options" section.

The problem with the info screen buttons is really a matter of necessity. I personally hate them, but I just can't fit everything in there as text buttons. I'd have to implement some horizontal scroll list, and that somehow seems worse? With the additional artwork and studio icon displayed on the left and right, even these icons barely fit. There are even more buttons/icons when you count in various supported add-ons. I've been searching for better ones for a long time, but without success. Maybe you have some alternative?

A gradient effect similar to the one you mentioned should still be there, though it behaves differently. Basically, the same gradient applied to the Home screen is applied to the OSD - if you switch on the darkening of home backgrounds, it will also activate the OSD gradient (the setting is called Dim home - counterintuitive, I know). Oh, and there's already a toggle that disables the OSD bumps and restores the watched indicators, it's called it the "Compact OSD".

Whooh! Sorry for the wall of text.

[curael]

@Alanon Hello there! I see your wall of text, and I answer back.

Ah yes, all valid points indeed.

Yes, I do find Artwork Beef somewhat janky. I am slowly figuring it out. I added discart to one of my TV shows but unfortunately it refuses to let the episodes inherit it, I was expecting it to work like clearart, funny thing is, instead it adds the disc on the top level of the TV show, but it puts the clearart on top as well, so I have a spinning disc, AND clearart. Mind you, when I have enabled only discart. Somehow the skin insists on having the clearart on for TV shows, no matter what, unless you just choose to disable both. It's funny - but I digress.

In regards to all the flags, have you thought about finegraining them? Add a ticker for each, so people can just disable source, audio, channels, codec, what ever individually. I dunno.. There is a lot, no doubt. I also think for instance the time left flag could be made significantly smaller. The "unwatched" count as well. Those are really big and the string itself takes up a lot of space. So might be some room to get back there? Oh, and the source flag, I grabbed the "mkv" source and renamed it to "fallback_source.png" :p So now everything is just MKV.. Which is not far off anyway.

And yeah, I found the flags, I replaced what I could from Arctic Zephyr - it uses the same flags, but also includes the aspectratios, OG Emi does not. So that's taken care of. I really do like how they are a bit smaller, even though they do take up the same blank space as the ones you included. Oh well.

And yes, I fully understand about the views, that's a handful, no doubt. I'll make due with the medium posters view, that one looks very good too.

Uhh, the ratings flags and what not, I disabled through the settings, across the whole theme. I do not care for IMDb or other user ratings. So if I can, I disable them. It also gave me a good amount of space in the bottom flags section - which was why I bothered to do it. So they didn't overlap right into the Next Episode thing to the left.

Hrm, I see what you mean about the info panels buttons, and yes, they are ugly. What if you aligned them from left, so that they just expand across the main panel box from there? I would imagine it wouldn't look too bad if you align them left, same pixel as where the text starts. That would give room for more buttons to tag along across the screen towards the right? Hm. I do see what you mean with the studio and artwork. Christ. That's a problem.. Yeah, you'd basically have to leave the "stock" set of text blocks in there and then have a "More..." block that would expand into a menu with everything else in it - which is of course not ideal if you like extra stuff. I don't really utilize that many things, so I didn't think about this issue at all to begin with. I am afraid I don't have any alternative logos, or anything, no. They are already rather small. I would consider inverting them, though. So it's the circles being colored by selection1 color instead of the outside square.

And oh my! "Dim home"! Yeah when I saw that I was like "Nah, I'm not gonna do that, no need!" But I see now that it solves my issue on the OSD, lol. Thank you very much. :p Oh, and I did find the compact OSD setting, it helped me very much. Again, I'd love text instead of the little icons, in the bottom of the OSD.

Extra question: Would it be possible on episode level, in the Media and Info Views, to see the season poster, instead of the top level poster? It's funny how I enter a season of a show, and it shows me the top level poster, instead of "Season 1" poster that I just saw when I entered said season. I saw in the Arctic Zephyr + MOD, the dev have done it, but I am not too good at digging through all the files, so I never found out what he replaced the poster call with. :/

Oh by the way, I have checked "use now playing as video" in the Background options, but it not using the video when I leave full screen.. *gasp* does this have something to do with the Dim homescreen feature? :p

Anyway, here's an image, of the matroska'fied "?" and what I consider to be pretty final right now. Other than all these little kinks that I'm asking you about. The poster changing to the top level is strange to me, but it seems to be the case in the majority of themes.

[rhoop206]

Thank you sir. Much appreciated! I’ll take a stab at this tomorrow and see what I can figure out - thank you for pointing me in the right direction and thank you for the quick response!!