How do I actually start?

[calintz]

Hey, i read the howto guide on skinning VLC. It explains how to skin and stuff however what it doesnt seem to tell me is how to actually begin. What file do I open to start coding? I looked around in the skins directory but none of the files were readable (i tried opening the vlt and xml in notepad only to get gibberish). Could anyone please give me a push in the right direction as I would like to start making my own skins.

Here is an example of what I'm aiming for, something really really simple yet elegant.



Thanks in advance.

[ipkiss]

The best way to start is to look at an existing skin and see how it is done.
As explained in the "Compression" section of the skinning howto, .vlt files are compressed skins (usually in .tar.gz format). Rename such a file with the .tar.gz extension, then open it with your favorite unarchiver to extract its contents.
You then need a text editor to open the extracted XML file, and notepad is probably the worst editor you could find. JEdit is a much better choice, for example.

[calintz]

thanks alot, i'll try that.