[highlander666]

OK, Im not really sure what to officially call what I'm trying to do :-)  

I'm just an amateur modifying the default estuary skin to make it more custom.
I've got pretty much everything working the way I want, except this one thing is confounding me.

in Home.xml, I've modified the widgets on the RHS of "movies" to simply have 3 lists:    genres, Recently added movies, and a new "Years" category.  The first 2 already existed, I deleted the rest, and I tried adding a modified version of "genres" to show the years

It works... except it shows them in ascending order, starting in 1927.  I want them in descending order since the point was an easy way to get to the last few years of releases. And of course it gets cut off after 15 or so... meaning all the recent years I am looking for aren't available at all :-P

Nothing I try makes this happen.   The widget currently looks like:

<include content="WidgetListCategories" condition="Library.HasContent(movies)">
  <param name="content_path" value="videodb://movies/years/"/>
  <param name="sortorder" value="descending"/>
  <param name="widget_header" value="Years"/>
  <param name="widget_target" value="videos"/>
  <param name="list_id" value="7777"/>
  <param name="icon" value="$VAR[WidgetYearIconVar]"/>
  <param name="icon_height" value="70"/>   
</include>


I've also tried adding various 'sortby' fields (date, year, years), but nothing seems to change the order.       

Suggestions? 

Thanks
Andrew

[smitchell6879]

You could make a playlist and set that as the path.

[ronie]

have you adjusted the WidgetListCategories code as well?
an further down down road, the SubmenuContent code also needs changes.

[highlander666]

No, I don't know what that means :-) 

I did notice that movies/years.xml has "ascending" in it... so I tried creating a custom video node called years2.xml which is identical, except has "descending" for the sort order.
then tried using  videodb://movies/years2/  as the content

That didn't work either... kodi doesn't seem to pick up what I put in   .kodi/userdata/library/video/movies    
I have a copy of everything from /usr/share/... there, but it isn't  picking up years2.xml    ( i get no widget when I tried that) .  In fact, if I modify the local "years.xml" to be descending, it doesnt work either.. it still shows them in the same ascending order :-P

>> cat years.xml
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<node order="3" type="filter">
    <label>562</label>
    <icon>DefaultYear.png</icon>
    <content>movies</content>
    <group>years</group>
    <order direction="descending">sorttitle</order>
</node>

[ronie]

sounds like you're beating something with a hammer and expect it to work ;-)

No, I don't know what that means :-) 

well in your code you're passing a sortorder param to WidgetListCategories, so find the WidgetListCategories code and change it to pass the param to the SubmenuContent code.
then change the SubmenuContent code to use the sortorder param.

[ronie]

if you're not familiar with includes / params, see: http://kodi.wiki/view/XBMC_Skinning_Manu...n_includes

[highlander666]

sounds like you're beating something with a hammer and expect it to work ;-)

No, I don't know what that means :-) 

well in your code you're passing a sortorder param to WidgetListCategories, so find the WidgetListCategories code and change it to pass the param to the SubmenuContent code.
then change the SubmenuContent code to use the sortorder param.  

Indeed.  I was hoping the hammer would work.  It worked up until now anyway :-)

I actually managed to follow what you suggested after a few minutes of poking and following the code.  (I don't speak xml well.. but it is just another language).   
Anyway, I now have the categories sorting by year in descending order!!

Excellent thanks.
Andrew

Now.. on to figuring out how to disable the "view options" side menu...   and then I think its a wrap and I will have recovered my skins functionality from kodi 15