Editing xmls and maki scripts

[ariszlo]

This is a new thread to continue the Is it possible to move PE_Info to the main player? topic because most of the questions raised there are not strictly Quinto-specific.

Then I apply the bitmap font to the remaining (second) instance. But it just disappears.
– Oh, I see now why it disappeared, it's because this font doesn't have any letters but they still take space. So if you please remove the words and the colon, it will be fine!

This post describes how you can remove them.

I managed to do it myself! It works fine, thanks a lot!

How did you do it? Did you lower the value of x in the "a1" tag? That's not the best idea because it may confuse you about how x's are calculated. Removing the words by editing playlistlength.m and then compiling it to playlistlength.maki as described in this post will not cause such confusion.

[Calvaria]

I did it as you described in your post (with maki). Of course it would have taken me much less time, if I had your detailed explanation )

[ariszlo]

2) it's even more complicated than you have described because I as mentioned earlier in some timers Winamp removes extra space for the same combination of digits and colon while in others it doesn't

Could you show the codes of the different timers, please?

3) even if I manage to create smaller bitmap font it will not make much sense – even though the digits will be smaller, the distances between them will become proportionately larger.

They should not. I tested it with the attached bitmap font.

Add this line to the <!-- FONTS --> section of elements.xml somewhere between <elements> and </elements>:

code:
<bitmap id="testfont" file="PNG\testfont.png" gammagroup="gamma.main.player.timer"/>

Then change the font of one of the timers to testfont and see that the distances will be all right.

[Calvaria]

Could you show the codes of the different timers, please?

If I understand you correctly the codes are
display="time"
display="songlength"
display="timeremaining"

I tried you testfont, on one hand the font is smaller and the distances between digits are small too, on the other hand the distance between the colon and the following digit is huge, a whole digit with spaces can fit there. There is this line in main-player.xlm in the timer section <!-- space between number left/right and ":", here 8 pixels --> but it's not clear what this comment refers to in the code and whether this space can be changed.

I made one digit smaller in the original bitmap timer font and indeed the space around this digit became greater. So I don't know how to explain all this. But from the practical point of view I am concerned not so much about the font size as about the distance between the colon and the following digits in different timers.

[ariszlo]

Removing timecolonwidth="15" might fix it.

[ariszlo]

This is what the Skin Developer Wiki says about timecolonwidth:

timecolonwidth - (int) How many extra pixels wider or smaller should the colon be when displaying time. Default is -1

[Calvaria]

I set it to 12 and it works fine, but not in the case of display="songlength" or total playlist length. For those two I tried removing the line altogether, setting it to -1, 0 , 1or 12 – it doesn't affect the colon.

[ariszlo]

Could you post how you modified this?

<text id="a1"
  x="267" y="80" h="28" w="0" relatw="1" align="left"
  font="Arial" fontsize="28" color="255,255,255" text="-"
  tooltip="Total playlist time (hh:mm:ss / hh:mm)"
/> 

Could you also post the tag containing "songlength" starting with < and ending with /> as in the "a1" tag above?

[ariszlo]

I have just found this: Change Time or Clock Format. If it still has not been fixed since 2010, and chances are that it has not, then it explains why you cannot set timecolonwidth for strings copied from PE_Info.

What bitmap font are you using for songlength and total playlist length?

[Calvaria]

<text id="a1"
        x="310" y="150" h="28" w="250" align="right"
        font="bitmapfont.timer.id"
        timecolonwidth="1"
        /> 

<text
        x="170" y="50" w="160" h="20"
        id="mp.timer.id"
        align="right"
        display="songlength"
        font="bitmapfont.timer.id"
        ghost="0"
        timeroffstyle="1"
        timecolonwidth="12"
        /> 

I am using the standard Quinto bitmap for all timers.

[Calvaria]

There is another minor thing with timers. The Quinto timer (display="time"), unlike other timers, has the leading zero. Can it be dropped?

[ariszlo]

It seems timecolonwidth is still buggy. So I would use a TrueType font instead. In the example below, I am using a custom TrueType font called FifteenOkay.

Copy FifteenOkay.ttf in the PNG folder.

Add this line to the fonts section in elements.xml:

<truetypefont id="font.length.id" file="PNG\FifteenOkay.ttf"/> 

Change font="bitmapfont.timer.id" to font="font.length.id".

Add fontsize and color.

[ariszlo]

There is another minor thing with timers. The Quinto timer (display="time"), unlike other timers, has the leading zero. Can it be dropped?

Yes, it can but it would require heavy editing of 14-main-player.m and would go against the skin author's intention. You might want to send him an email asking for an option to turn oldTimer on and off in the next release of Quinto.

[Calvaria]

All right, thanks a lot for the info.

[ariszlo]

You are welcome. Here you can find some other dotted fonts if you decide on using a TrueType font for your timers: wFonts.com

Just type 01:23 in the Custom fonts preview field and browser through the pages.