Themes....

[Bohica]

Every time I finally think I get the concept of themes under my belt... something reaches up and plucks me on the forehead...

I notice that frequently (not sure why this is not always the case or even when it is not) I notice on close and reopen of studio, that the last reference to a theme becomes the primary reference to a theme. Is this suppose to happen - even tho on many occasion I keep setting it back to the theme organizer reference? I have not yet gotten to a point in my work where I move to make an STVI, but I have glanced ahead -- and am I correct in assuming that renaming all the theme widgets and re-linking references is the primary obstacle there?

If so - is there some unwritten or tested methodology concerning the creation and management of themes before I get much farther? It would seem to me (being new to this and all) that you really have two options. Create all your themes once in the theme organizer, and ONLY reference them from there.... or create unique themes every time you need them in every menu and there would never be an issue -- except for massive waste To tell you the truth - I am somewhere in the middle... and it causes all sorts of problems when exporting menus and importing them to clean the source up... What is the CORRECT way to be approaching this....

I did notice the note by neilm in his STVI import module that states "use existing themes whereever possible"... just want some guidance from some those who are much farther along....

Thanks all

[BobPhoenix]

I try to use existing themes whenever possible. Then I used NIELM's generic importer module to setup my import. I just remove all widgets below the base theme from the import and let the code replace it with the matching already existing one in the STV. I only created a theme when I couldn't find one that I thought worked the way I wanted. Where I had problems was with SageMC since a theme I wanted to use actually appeared to be duplicated so I had to find the correct one to match the look of SageMC in my plugin. One version was the default STV "look" the other had the SageMC "look".

BobP.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Bohica

I notice that frequently (not sure why this is not always the case or even when it is not) I notice on close and reopen of studio, that the last reference to a theme becomes the primary reference to a theme. Is this suppose to happen - even tho on many occasion I keep setting it back to the theme organizer reference?

SageTV doesn't really care which one is the primary reference; that only matters for the visual display of widget relationships in Studio. To SageTV, they are all the same widget chains.

The fact that the primary reference may not be the one you set it to be is just a side effect of STVs using xml format now.

- Andy

[Bohica]

So when you create themes... you create them once in the theme organizer and reference them?? Or do you create them in your menu...

I have some 4 or 5 menus now I have created -- many with somewhat unique requirements... I obviously use the main menu theme, and things like menu title and centered text -- etc... but for pictures, for adjusting the spacing of certain popups, or any time you want or need a custom text font or size I create my own -- correct? I have gone through all menus now and made sure every theme widget is a reference to one in the theme organizer... where I created a new panel that stores all my themes... am I approaching this correctly?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Bohica

So when you create themes... you create them once in the theme organizer and reference them?? Or do you create them in your menu...?

I just created them in my menu.

but for pictures, for adjusting the spacing of certain popups, or any time you want or need a custom text font or size I create my own -- correct??

I believe so.

I have gone through all menus now and made sure every theme widget is a reference to one in the theme organizer... where I created a new panel that stores all my themes... am I approaching this correctly?

Sounds like a great idea to me (wish I'd thought of it).

BobP.

[Opus4]

In case this makes a difference: no themes _have_ to be in the Theme Organizer menu. That is simply something to make a developer's life a little easier by being able to find the themes fairly easily when adding new code. SageTV doesn't care if they are listed below that Menu widget or not; it might matter to you, though.

- Andy

[Bohica]

Hey Andy,

Yeah - I knew that - but just wanted to know what I 'SHOULD' be doing so I dont run into trouble later... It was already becoming messy - so I switched to the theme organizer method to clean up what I was doing... just easier as you said. What I was really trying to get out of this thread were any warnings early on about using the STVI importer, and how that affected what I was doing and how I managed my themes... maybe I am just not making sense...

[Opus4]

I think you were making sense -- I just wanted to answer the primary reference question & that you don't have to use the theme organizer, just in case that part wasn't clear... and then I left all the STVi stuff to others.

- Andy

[aperry]

Originally Posted by Opus4

The fact that the primary reference may not be the one you set it to be is just a side effect of STVs using xml format now.

Given that it is XML, I would think that keeping the "primary" reference set to a particular item would be easier. You would have the primary reference with all its definitions, then whenever you needed it, you'd create other items that referenced it. This is the way it happens in the XML from what I've seen, but which one is the primary reference does change.

You referenced that for developers, it is helpful to have the Theme organizer. I agree, however, if desired, the developer should always be able to go there to see the primary references as well. This would save jumping all over the STV/XML file as you are stepping through some execution.

For example, I was tracing through the CenteredFileBrower, and when it was done, there were 4-5 top level items open at the end, some of which went waaaay down into their tree to show me the primary reference.

I realize that I can click on the item in the organizer ones, and set them as primary references, but it does not "stick".

What's really interesting is when you have a tree like this:

Widget 1 (primary)
 Action
  If
   True
    Widget 1 (reference)

I've seen it where the lower reference item gets set to be the primary reference. The only way I can "fix" that so I can see the whole thing is to set the upper one to primary reference.

Wow, this got a little long. Anyways, I think if Studio would honor where you defined a primary reference, and have it stick, I think that from a developer's perspective, it would make things a lot easier.

[Bohica]

Exactly my concern, adding that if something like that doesn't 'stick' - and then you dont see it when you move on to the STVI creation -- which looks to rename and reinsert these themes -- could you cause a problem you dont mean to... I guess I will just work through it and see... I am just assuming that if I use my theme organizer, and all MY custom themes are located under one panel, and none of my menus have implicit themes in them, I can just import that panel as well later when I am creating my STVI and avoid problems...... sheesh I am getting dizzy.

[nielm]

When you export, Studio will always make sure that referenced widgets (except menu widgets) are expanded, so even if the 'primary' is outside of the exported menu, the export will contain a primary.

I work by referencing existing themes as much as possible, but making sure that themes that need to be exclusive to the import have a unique name which will not be used by anything else -- the existing themes will be replaced with the... uh.. existing existing themes, and the exlusive themes will be left alone.

Did that make any sense?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Opus4

SageTV doesn't really care which one is the primary reference; that only matters for the visual display of widget relationships in Studio. To SageTV, they are all the same widget chains.

I think the point is that Studio users do care which one is primary, and consider it a bug that Sage doesn't care.

Moreover, it's not completely irrelevant from a functional standpoint either. Bad things happen if you delete a chunk of widget code that happens to contain a primary reference that migrated there from somewhere else. Typically you don't find out this has happened until much later, when seemingly unrelated stuff starts breaking. If primary references stayed where you put them in Theme Organizer, the Delete command would be a lot safer than it is now.

[Opus4]

Please note that I didn't say that users have no reason to care about it... I said that from SageTV's (the application) standpoint, it was irrelevant -- meaning that SageTV would execute the same regardless of which widget was the primary reference. I said that it did matter from a visual standpoint of what the user sees -- it is one of several things you have to be careful about when deleting widgets.

- Andy