[Karellen]

support for Transparency! was abandoned because Python was upgraded from version 2 to version 3.

Nope.
ronie abandoned it as he no longer had time to maintain it. IIRC it was last updated for v18(?). So to have it work correctly for v21, requires quite a lot of updating.
Can't comment on ChatGPT's knowledge on Kodi's skinning engine.

If you have updated the addon.xml to show v5.17, then it should load. I just installed to check and loads correctly...

[hurricane51]

Thanks for the clarification. I stand corrected!

[hurricane51]

One more question: Where might I find an updated addon.xml? The version I have looks to be 5.15. This is what the skin.transparency file shows:

<import addon="xbmc.gui" version="5.15.0" />

[Karellen]

Where might I find an updated addon.xml?

Here, have mine... https://paste.kodi.tv/oxubeyebun.kodi

[hurricane51]

THANKS!

[Mordred]

If you have updated the addon.xml to show v5.17, then it should load. I just installed to check and loads correctly...

Is that on your Master User profile? I can't understand why mine won't just load there, but will on other profiles.

I did copy my Kids profile, renamed it Primary, copied over my sources.xml, advancedsettings.xml, and guisettings.xml from Master User and then I can startup Kodi and load directly into that one, but it's kind of an annoying hack to have to do.

[Karellen]

Is that on your Master User profile?

Yep.
I don't use multiple profiles. Maybe you can post a log?

[Mordred]

Is that on your Master User profile?

Yep.
I don't use multiple profiles. Maybe you can post a log?

Okay I got it working. Went to the skins menu and it was showing as installed, but not enabled. I was able to enable it and then it let me switch to it and it worked fine. No idea why I could use an un-enabled skin in my non-master profiles (it didn't even show up as an option there) but now it's all good.

Oddly it did show that service.skin.widgets dependency was missing, even though it's installed and I can use it to play stuff from the recently added view of Movies/TVs shows. Maybe that was part of the issue?

[Karellen]

Oddly it did show that service.skin.widgets dependency was missing,

Yea, I had it disabled in that addon.xml I sent you. You can see that on line 6.
Its because at the time I couldn't find the correct version to install, and the skin refused to install without it, so I just commented out that requirement.
You should still be able to install and use the addon.

[Mordred]

Oddly it did show that service.skin.widgets dependency was missing,

Yea, I had it disabled in that addon.xml I sent you. You can see that on line 6.
Its because at the time I couldn't find the correct version to install, and the skin refused to install without it, so I just commented out that requirement.
You should still be able to install and use the addon.

Well that's what was weird. I updated the addon.xml on my skin.transparency to be <import addon="service.skin.widgets" version="0.0.34" />
and I had installed the 0.0.34 version of that addon, so there shouldn't be any reason it would show as missing that I can figure out... unless maybe I haven't enabled service.skin.widgets and that's the problem. Will have to check that after work tonight.

[kurai]

This might sound really stupid and ignorant, but I've been reading about how ChatGPT has been able to write code. As I understand it, support for Transparency! was abandoned because Python was upgraded from version 2 to version 3. Wouldn't it be possible to see what ChatGPT could do with the Transparency! code to update it? Again, sorry if this sounds ignorant -- I'm not a programmer.

Unfortunately not - the various AI-assisted code things around are good for generalised solutions to easily described problems with commonly used coding languages, and Kodi skinning is ... not that 
It's *very* niche and there just isn't a large enough pool of published exemplar code around for them to train on, and make anything sane/useful out of.

It's an unfortunate situation because none of the skinning engine changes introduce things that Transparency would require a massive, fundamental rewrite to deal with - only that it requires a pretty deep knowledge of the engine's quirks and intricacies to make the (relatively) small changes to bring Transparency up to date in a time effective way - and there just aren't that many people with that knowledge base and the time/willingness to do it :/

[Gazza too]

I've been using Transparency! since I first found it back in the Helix days. For the past 4 years I've been on a Kodi DSPlayer (Krypton) version with Transparency. I finally decided that it wasn't worth the pain of continuing to use DSPlayer and MadVR and decided to give the latest version of Kodi a shot. Naturally I randomly chose the day Omega was released. Imagine my surprise to find out that the only skin I've known for the past 10 years is no longer available and hasn't been maintained in awhile.

Anyway, I'm highly motivated to figure out a way around this problem and get Transparency working again on Omega. Here's where I'm at:

I've had a portable installation since I started messing with DSPlayer because I wanted to be able to have multiple Kodi versions side by side without issue. I installed Omega, and then copied over my entire portable data folder without changing a thing. I have two profiles: Master User and a kids profile with different libraries, both of which were using Transparency. When I first loaded up Kodi, it opened the Master User and I was greeted with Estuary like everybody else. However, when I switched to the kids profile, I had Transparency just like before. That tells me it can work regardless of what Kodi thinks/says.

Awesome - thanks for letting us know.
I got it working as well. I don't use most of the clever functions but it is nice to have the main Kodi engine up to date.
I was still on 18.9