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Here is a VLC skin I'm working on. It's almost finished. I'm having some problems with the layout though. I want to be able to toggle the playlist (with the playlist button right of the volume), but this is doesn't work too well, everything get's totally messed up when I try to toggle.

I'm using <layout> to remove/add the playlist. When toggleing between layouts and resizing, the window won't stay static in size.

Also I've discovererd that resizeE and resizeS doesn't work. Only resizeSE works.

I'm also really dissapointed in text rentering in skins2. Looks really bad. Please make it use Windows Cleartype.

Are these issues stuff you will fix in future versions of VLC or will skins like this never work as supposed to?

Thanks for an otherwise cool video player.

Here is a VLC skin I'm working on. It's almost finished.

It's a nice skin, i like its sober design.

I'm having some problems with the layout though. I want to be able to toggle the playlist (with the playlist button right of the volume), but this is doesn't work too well, everything get's totally messed up when I try to toggle.

I'm using <layout> to remove/add the playlist. When toggleing between layouts and resizing, the window won't stay static in size.

Layouts are independant: the size of one layout can change without impacting the size of the other ones. So i don't see any way to solve your problem right now.
But the need is real, i will see if we can add an easy mechanism to "link" the sizes of the layouts, so that they grow together (or proportionally).

Also I've discovererd that resizeE and resizeS doesn't work. Only resizeSE works.

Then you have found a bug. I will try to check it and fix the problem this week-end.

I'm also really dissapointed in text rentering in skins2. Looks really bad. Please make it use Windows Cleartype.

What is so bad about it?
The problem with ClearType is that it's Windows-specific, while skins should also work on Unix/Linux. Our current rendering system (based on freetype) is very portable.

Are these issues stuff you will fix in future versions of VLC or will skins like this never work as supposed to?

For the layout and the resizing, we will definitely do something. For Cleartype, it's unsure, probably not in a near future. But you might motivate us a little more if you managed to demonstrate what would be the actual benefit with this system

For Cleartype, it's unsure, probably not in a near future. But you might motivate us a little more if you managed to demonstrate what would be the actual benefit with this system

Sure current rendering works for both Linux and Windows. But doesn't Linux also have its own text rendering system? Shouldn't that be used? It wouldn't be hard to send a question to the system and ask; Hey!, what OS is this? And use the system text rendering.

It's in my opinion that the VLC will become perceived as a more professional software and might encourage more people to make skins for it if it would use cleartype on Windows computers. Since I know a lot of fellow graphics designer friends are perfectionists when it comes to their work.

Here is an example, as you can see the bottom ClearType example looks a lot better then the VLC rendered text at the top.


Btw. How do I remove the full path of the items in the playlist?

Sure current rendering works for both Linux and Windows. But doesn't Linux also have its own text rendering system? Shouldn't that be used? It wouldn't be hard to send a question to the system and ask; Hey!, what OS is this? And use the system text rendering.

Yes, Linux also have its text rendering system, it is precisely .... Freetype

Here is an example, as you can see the bottom ClearType example looks a lot better then the VLC rendered text at the top.

Ok... there are two different problems here:
- the first text looks bad because kerning is wrong... What font did you use ? Maybe there is a problem in the way we use freetype (unlikely to be a bug in freetype itself) but I've never seen such a problem, on linux at least.
- your ClearType example uses sub-pixel rendering, which makes the result definitely better with LCD screens. Freetype is actually able to do that too, but I wonder how we could decide to enable this feature or not (the easy way is to make it an option in VLC preferences, but it is quite redundant with system-wide font rendering parameters, which exist on both Windows and Linux...)

I agree with you that using native font rendering would give better results, but it would require some redesign in the code, and... time I don't currently have
Anyway I'd like to fix your kerning issue because it's not acceptable... as for sub-pixel rendering, we'll see

The font is Tahoma on both texts. I'd rather see you use the Windows rendering in the future though. It helps keep consistency between applications. It's not like I'm saying you should change this now, nor tomorrow, but maybe for v1.0 or something.

Btw, the Windows rendering is used in wxWidgets. Which I really like and would use if it wasn't for the bad icons and the progressbar style volume control.

Btw. ClearType is not only for LCD. I have CRT and I would never use anything other than ClearType.

Also I've discovererd that resizeE and resizeS doesn't work. Only resizeSE works.

Then you have found a bug. I will try to check it and fix the problem this week-end.

Could you precise what is not working exactly? I tried with the development version and it's working fine.

Here are my two lines that doesn't work. Did I miss something?

action
Action triggered by a click on the control. Possible values are 'move', to move the window, 'resizeE', to resize horizontally, 'resizeS' to resize vertically, and 'resizeSE' to resize both horizontally and vertically. Mnemonics: S, E and SE stand for South, East, and South-East. The 'resizeS' and 'resizeE' actions are available since VLC 0.8.5 only

You need the development version to use the resizeS and resizeE actions, because VLC 0.8.5 has not yet been released. Precompiled packages of the development version can be found here.

Nice. It works. What happend to the skin engine switcher menu in the dev. builds though? Had to change it in the preferences.

This option was often causing crashes, due to a bug in wxWidgets. It has been deactivated until it is fixed...

I like this skin. Thanks

I'd love to see this skin posted A.S.A.P. after testing. On my Mac or WinBox this would look quite nice!!!!!!!

Can't release the skin because VLC doesn't currently support the design.
Also I'm having issues with the repleat all playlist function. Either it's a bug in the Test1 release or my code is wrong somewhere.