This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR). Written by: Louis Braun Project's homepage: http://projects.vdr-developer.org/projects/plg-skindesigner Latest version: http://projects.vdr-developer.org/projects/plg-skindesigner/files GIT repository: git clone git://projects.vdr-developer.org/vdr-plugin-skindesigner.git This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See the file COPYING for more information. Description ----------- Skindesigner is a VDR skin engine that displays XML based Skins. Currently three XML Skins (MetrixHD, nOpacity freestyle and blackhole) are included in /skins/ Requirements ------------ - VDR version >= 2.0.0 - cairo - librsvg-2 >= 2.36.0 - libxml2 - libcurl - softhddevice plugin revision ec58e456 (2015-06-13) or newer. With older versions shifting does not work properly - For displaying horizontal menus with VDR <= 2.2.x a VDR patch is required (see /patches/vdr-2.2.0_horizontal_menu.patch in the plugin source directory) Without this patch the keys left/right and up/down are not toggled in horizontal menus. With VDR >= 2.3.1 this patch is not needed anymore. - epgsearch Git since commit ba7c6277 (2013-01-03) to correctly replace the schedules menu with epgsearch Installation ------------ Skindesigner consists of the Skindesigner Plugin itself and a shared library called "libSkindesignerAPI" which allows other Plugins to use the facilities of Skindesigner. Since these other Plugins need to have access to the library, the library has to be proper installed on your system. With a "make install" both the plugin and the library are installed on your system. The destination where the library will be installed can be set with the PREFIX parameter: "PREFIX=/usr make install". Default of PREFIX is /usr/local. After installation check if libskindesignerapi.pc is correctly found in your PKG_CONFIG_PATH. Other Plugins using the library issue the following commands in their makefiles which should also work on your commandline: pkg-config --cflags libskindesignerapi pkg-config --libs libskindesignerapi pkg-config --modversion libskindesignerapi Note that skindesigner itself and all plugins which use libSkindesignerAPI have to be build against the same major verison of the library to be compatible. After installation you have to care about the paths for the XML skins and epg images. The following paths can be set at startup: -s , --skinpath= Path where XML skins get installed by "make install" or by package manager (Default: /plugins/skindesigner/skins/) -i , --installerpath= Path where XML skins are installed by the Skindesigner Installer (Default: /plugins/skindesigner/installerskins/) -l , --logopath= Path to common logo set for all skins (Default: /plugins/skindesigner/logos/) -e path, --epgimages=path Path to the epgimages (Default: /epgimages/) ResourceDirectory, ConfigDirectory and CacheDirectory are taken from your VDR configuration (make.config or vdr.pc). During a "make install" the included skins are automatically copied from /skins/ to the configured skin path. Important: All Skins (both the skins installed by a packet manager or by "make install" and the skins installed with Skindesigner) need the directory "dtd" accessible one level above the directory the skin itself is placed. With a "make install" the dtd directory is copied to /dtd. If you use a different to the default, please add a symlink in the appropriate directory to /dtd. Add this symlink necessarily for the skins installed to . If is /var/cache/vdr/plugins/skindesigner/skins for instance, and the dtd directory is located at /etc/vdr/plugins/skindesigner/dtd, create the following symlink: ln -s /etc/vdr/plugins/skindesigner/dtd /var/cache/vdr/plugins/skindesigner/dtd For S2-6400 Users: Disable High Level OSD, otherwise the plugin will not be loaded because lack of true color support For Xine-Plugin Users: Set "Blend scaled Auto" as OSD display mode to achieve an suitable true color OSD. For Xineliboutput Users: Start vdr-sxfe with the --hud option enabled Since the default skin MetrixHD uses VDROpenSans as font which is not installed per default, you may want to install this font (included in /fonts/) first. Otherwise the inside VDRs OSD menu configured vdrOsd Font is used as default. Channel Logos ------------- Since each XML skin is responsible for it's used channel logos, skindesigner searches for channel logos only in the skin dependend directory /plugins/skindesigner/skins//logos Each copy your used logos directly to this directory or set a symbolic link to a common channellogo directory. I recommend to use channel logos from https://github.com/3PO/Senderlogos To download them just change in the directory you want to place the logos and do a: git clone https://github.com/3PO/Senderlogos.git logos An update of the logos can then be done with a "git pull" just inside this directory. In this logo pack all files are named only with lower case letters. Skindesigner uses the channel name CONVERTED TO LOWER CASE LETTERS to search for an appropriate channel logo. With this, approximately 90% of the channel logos should work immediately after placing the channel logos in the correct place. So if you have to change the name of a channel logo (may be by inserting a space or a hyphen) so that it fits to the channel name, only use lower case letters, and not the name of the channel with upper and lower letters as displayed inside VDR. If no logo is found for the channel name, additionally a search for a logo named as the ChannelID is performed. Analog to the channel name the ChannelID is also converted to lower case letters. This allows channel logos for channels with changing names (for instance Sky Feed Channels). Additional hint: some channels have slashes in their name (in germany nick/comedy for instance). In this example, as a dirty hack just create a folder in your channel logo directory named "nick" and place an image named "comedy.png" inside this folder.