2011-02-24, 01:23
Right, it appears we basically have 2 types of artwork addons as far as I'm concerned:
1. Artwork which the user could expect to configure.
These would be user-installable, and skin independent. i.e. they should work across the board so if the user sets it for skin A it'll also work without any changes in skin B.
1.1. Weather fanart packs. Either multi or single image packs. Skinner uses Weather.Fanart info label and XBMC handles the rest.
1.2. Generic background packs. Either multi or single image packs. Skinner uses Background.Video info label and XBMC handles the rest. IMO it's best to wait on this until we've figured out what to do with the homescreen as far as making it editable and consistent across skins.
1.3. More specific background packs, such as Genre fanart. These would be set by XBMC during directory listing. Personally I'd be reluctant to include these, as they start cluttering the UI - we'd need a setting for them, and I'm not clear as to where this sort of thing makes sense. After all, are folk going to want Director fanart? Year fanart? Where does it stop? One way to handle this might be to to use anything the user has installed. If they have 5 genre packs installed, then we just use the first image we find by default, and allow the user to set it just like they can set thumbs or fanart for other items.
2. Artwork which the user doesn't need to know about, can't install, and can't configure.
These would typically be a <requires> in the skin, and would not be shown in the addons manager or be separately installable by the user. Essentially they're a way to pull out a lot of the common images most skins use into separate packs. Skinner would utilise a generic infolabel to grab these, eg Skin.Art(skinart.studiologos.glossy,logo_name)
2.1 Studio/Record label logos. I forsee a simple default pack (or two) that almost all skinners will use. Possibly also some other packs should separate aspect ratios or somesuch be required.
2.2 Media info logos. Personally I think we should just settle on one of them and use that across the board, but I can see uses for others that may be more tailored for your skin. I don't see a point in making this user-configurable, but also don't see any reason to stop you the skinner from doing so if you wish (you'd just <require> two separate packs). We may be able to make it easier on skinners by normalizing names of logos to save duplicating images.
2.3 Icon packs. The style of these is generally something the skinner should choose, but may be able to be shared across skins.
2.4 Skin-specific artwork packs. These would essentially give you a way to push out some of your artwork to separate packs, theoretically decoupling the media from the XML files. I'm not sure how far to go with this - after all, it's silly if you need to change them both as you mayaswell include them together and keep things self-contained. Then again, often you may have a small XML based fix that doesn't affect the media at all, so having all of the media completely separate from the xml files makes sense. Your opinions on this are wanted. There's technical issues to consider (eg will the packs be packed, and if so how will this affect performance? what to do with clashes and so on...) but that's primarily my job
The key points to make:
* Skins either require art (section 2) and thus the user has no control, or they use it if available and the user has control (section 1).
* The goal is to make it easy on the regular user, not necessarily easy for the power user. Most users aren't going to even consider changing the look of the h264 logo!
Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Jonathan
1. Artwork which the user could expect to configure.
These would be user-installable, and skin independent. i.e. they should work across the board so if the user sets it for skin A it'll also work without any changes in skin B.
1.1. Weather fanart packs. Either multi or single image packs. Skinner uses Weather.Fanart info label and XBMC handles the rest.
1.2. Generic background packs. Either multi or single image packs. Skinner uses Background.Video info label and XBMC handles the rest. IMO it's best to wait on this until we've figured out what to do with the homescreen as far as making it editable and consistent across skins.
1.3. More specific background packs, such as Genre fanart. These would be set by XBMC during directory listing. Personally I'd be reluctant to include these, as they start cluttering the UI - we'd need a setting for them, and I'm not clear as to where this sort of thing makes sense. After all, are folk going to want Director fanart? Year fanart? Where does it stop? One way to handle this might be to to use anything the user has installed. If they have 5 genre packs installed, then we just use the first image we find by default, and allow the user to set it just like they can set thumbs or fanart for other items.
2. Artwork which the user doesn't need to know about, can't install, and can't configure.
These would typically be a <requires> in the skin, and would not be shown in the addons manager or be separately installable by the user. Essentially they're a way to pull out a lot of the common images most skins use into separate packs. Skinner would utilise a generic infolabel to grab these, eg Skin.Art(skinart.studiologos.glossy,logo_name)
2.1 Studio/Record label logos. I forsee a simple default pack (or two) that almost all skinners will use. Possibly also some other packs should separate aspect ratios or somesuch be required.
2.2 Media info logos. Personally I think we should just settle on one of them and use that across the board, but I can see uses for others that may be more tailored for your skin. I don't see a point in making this user-configurable, but also don't see any reason to stop you the skinner from doing so if you wish (you'd just <require> two separate packs). We may be able to make it easier on skinners by normalizing names of logos to save duplicating images.
2.3 Icon packs. The style of these is generally something the skinner should choose, but may be able to be shared across skins.
2.4 Skin-specific artwork packs. These would essentially give you a way to push out some of your artwork to separate packs, theoretically decoupling the media from the XML files. I'm not sure how far to go with this - after all, it's silly if you need to change them both as you mayaswell include them together and keep things self-contained. Then again, often you may have a small XML based fix that doesn't affect the media at all, so having all of the media completely separate from the xml files makes sense. Your opinions on this are wanted. There's technical issues to consider (eg will the packs be packed, and if so how will this affect performance? what to do with clashes and so on...) but that's primarily my job
The key points to make:
* Skins either require art (section 2) and thus the user has no control, or they use it if available and the user has control (section 1).
* The goal is to make it easy on the regular user, not necessarily easy for the power user. Most users aren't going to even consider changing the look of the h264 logo!
Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Jonathan
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