SKINEDITOR (So Good but So Bad) :((((

kolemieux · 09-30-2006, 10:49 AM

Guys,

Not sure why I am posting this other than maybe a hint, insight, or skineditor patch...?

First things first - I love SkinEditor... Without a GUI Skin Engine life just bites... But the fact that editor is automatically deleting XPOS/YPOS SCALING and various new goods Guino is tossing in is painful... Its so odd that SkinEditor seems to walk thru every single page in a skin and delete those entries on a Skin Save.... Almost like a global syntax check and just whacks that stuff.

I am at a point and suspect many are where I love popups and want to place them in different areas and misc. and just not sure if there is any hope to working around this. Or someone to patch this which dang if I knew how and could certainly would...

Thanks to all..

guino · 09-30-2006, 11:49 AM

Somebody needs to update the skin editor, that's all.. I'll do it, but it's not going to be very soon, I'm working on different things right now.

kolemieux · 09-30-2006, 01:03 PM

Understood Guino - it is rather interesting that the Skin Editor can manages to go thru every line of every skin so fast and yank those out. I figured there had to be a way to fool it from doing this as a simple workaround. Those are the main pieces and some of the more complex flash stuff but other than that it's really a fantastic piece of work.

Quote: Originally Posted by guino

Somebody needs to update the skin editor, that's all.. I'll do it, but it's not going to be very soon, I'm working on different things right now.

liquid_smoke · 09-30-2006, 04:26 PM

it actually deletes those items as soon as it loads the skin.

the temp work around i just did because it is a big pain to have to add those lines back in everytime you save.

I created a button in the skin that will copy over backedup copies of any .skin i have that has the XPOS and YPOS lines.
This is basicly how the alternate main menus i have work. (but dont use the current skin release as a reference)

Involves a little autoit scripting but nothing complicated.
If you want i can send you a template of how i have it setup. Its one extra step but a lot better than having to edit the individual files by hand everytime.

Enforcer · 09-30-2006, 04:29 PM

the iDrive skin has a load of custom formating codes to allow my little configuration program to work.

skin editor just rips them out, as one user found when he did some minor mods.

liquid_smoke · 09-30-2006, 04:41 PM

here is the template:

unzip these files into your skins dir, and place any .skin files you want into the "BACKUP" folder and when backup.exe is run it will copy any files it finds with .skin extension (no other file type will get copied) into the skins dir and overwrite existing files of same name without any prompts.

In your skin just create a button that runs backup.exe

"RUNW;$skinpath$backup.exe||RELOADSKIN"

this will also reload the skin when the file copy is finished

kolemieux · 09-30-2006, 08:40 PM

LS - disregard my PM then sir, had not seen this post but thanks a bunch. This ultimately is all I need and should likely get me what I need to do. I had planned on having some copy pastes but pain in the but.

Thanks LS!!!!

Quote: Originally Posted by liquid_smoke

here is the template:

unzip these files into your skins dir, and place any .skin files you want into the "BACKUP" folder and when backup.exe is run it will copy any files it finds with .skin extension (no other file type will get copied) into the skins dir and overwrite existing files of same name without any prompts.

In your skin just create a button that runs backup.exe

"RUNW;$skinpath$backup.exe||RELOADSKIN"

this will also reload the skin when the file copy is finished

liquid_smoke · 10-06-2006, 04:07 PM

Here is a much better solution.

First you need to update your objects.txt file for the RRSkinEditor
See this thread to get the latest version of this file
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...786#post939786
make sure you read the post i made (#9) that has an object you need to add to the end of the objects.txt file (critical for this to work)

Then after you have updated your objects.txt file for the skineditor, load your skin up and add an INC-Include, should be at the bottom of the dropdown list after you click the ADD button. In the textbox type the name of your file (without quotes) that will include the definition for the pop ups.

example.

In my .skin file i have

/, INC, Include file path
INC,POS.txt

in POS.txt i have

/POSX=272
/POSY=1

this will allow you to use the POS definition without worry of the skineditor removing these items.
If you have multiple popups with different values for the x,y pos just create a seperate .txt file for each popup.
The text file can be whatever name you want it to be also.

also in the future whenever any other new definitions are created that do not work with the skin editor, just use the same method.

JohnWPB · 10-06-2006, 05:27 PM

Well, I downloaded the latest code that Profit worked on back in January, to TRY to make sence of it.... It is just too far eyone my programming skills! Hopefully someone with some programming knowledge can take the time to fix this one issue.

The problem, and I think anyone that thinks about fixing it knows, that if they fix this ONE thing, that they will be bombarded with other requests almost instantly!!!
Reminds me of an old childhood game "Hot Potao"

liquid_smoke · 10-06-2006, 08:22 PM

yeah, i agree with the almost instant bombarding of feature request.
There are a few things that people are dieing to get fixed or added.
Hopefully in the future it wont become a serious problem.

But if you follow the steps in my previous post it will pretty much make any definitions that aren't supported by the skineditor mute. Its also a nicer way of making skins if you want to include a bunch of elements on multiple .skin files.
You can stick any valid definitions or commands in the INC file, so if you wanted to have a series of buttons that are exactly the same but present on every .skin file, instead of copy and pasting all the labels and buttons to every .skin file, you just put them in that one txt file and put an INC on every .skin file. Change the one .txt file and it updates the whole skin.

kolemieux · 10-06-2006, 08:38 PM

LS

Correct me if I am wrong.... but... have you noticed the Drag-n-Drop editor post and code does not seem to be removing the POS definitions. Sadly it does not have a Virtual Editor but I was doing them in a seperate text file (Save/Open/Close) and they all seemed to stay in-tact.....

Like your option here as well - fields for the x/y pos would be nice but again I'd be after more code vs fixing an issue.

I just wanted to mention this to you as I seemed to get that to work. The spacing of the skin files with that editor seems a but strange however.

Quote: Originally Posted by liquid_smoke

yeah, i agree with the almost instant bombarding of feature request.
There are a few things that people are dieing to get fixed or added.
Hopefully in the future it wont become a serious problem.

But if you follow the steps in my previous post it will pretty much make any definitions that aren't supported by the skineditor mute. Its also a nicer way of making skins if you want to include a bunch of elements on multiple .skin files.
You can stick any valid definitions or commands in the INC file, so if you wanted to have a series of buttons that are exactly the same but present on every .skin file, instead of copy and pasting all the labels and buttons to every .skin file, you just put them in that one txt file and put an INC on every .skin file. Change the one .txt file and it updates the whole skin.

liquid_smoke · 10-07-2006, 12:35 AM

i didnt test that version much, i use the virtualeditor a lot and i dont think that version had it.
You dont need fields for the x,y pos cuz they are stored in the txt file and not the .skin file.

kolemieux · 10-07-2006, 12:46 PM

And I think I was wrong after more testing LS... Well not completely wrong - but some funky piece of one of my skin files manipulated by the editor was not whacking this, but when I added to another it was barfing on it.

Yea what I mean on the X/Y pos piece was when adding the element (the ideal thing as we know) would be adding the element with X-Y pos instead of a seperate filename. However - THANKS...... Works perfect and maintains skin portability as well. Killer tip!!!!!

Thanks

Quote: Originally Posted by liquid_smoke

i didnt test that version much, i use the virtualeditor a lot and i dont think that version had it.
You dont need fields for the x,y pos cuz they are stored in the txt file and not the .skin file.

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