Video View For All Themes

Nismo

@mattrixk you don't need to update if you don't want, what I mean is for doing what @fieldofcows said about theme versions, you will need to update, so no sense for people that doesn't want to update.

I mean there is no sense on theme versions (that make things more difficult for theme developers) if people will need to update their ES to use that feature anyway.

Because we are trying to find a solution to help people that doesn't want to update ES, that's because no sense. A solution without the need to update.

I hope it's more clear now, sorry english it's not my native language.

fieldofcows

@Nismo Hmm... I'm not sure that's what I envisaged with my suggestion.

In looking for a solution I was trying to satisfy the following, where "New ES" supports video and "Old ES" does not support video.

Existing themes that do not support video work on both New ES and Old ES without error
Themes that have been updated to support video work on Old ES as well but obviously without video support (warnings are fine in the console but the theme should still work)
Theme writers can continue writing and testing non-video themes on any version of ES
Theme writers can write video supported themes on New ES

If we make a change to New ES that supports a new <version> tag (or similar) then we can satisfy all the conditions above.

The extra work that I referred to for themers is that if they way to support video in their themes and also be backwards-compatible with Old ES then they need to include the <version> tags as well as testing on Old ES (or getting someone else to :) )

Nismo

@fieldofcows As far I now... new video themes doesn't work on old ES. Read a few posts ago... and that's the only problem we have...

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@fieldofcows As far I now... new video themes doesn't work on old ES. Read a few posts ago...

Yes, hence wrapping the video view tags in <version></version> which is ignored by old ES, allowing the theme to load without video support.

Nismo

@fieldofcows wrapping the video view tags in <version></version> will work on old ES out of the box?

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@fieldofcows wrapping the video view tags in <version></version> will work on old ES out of the box?

Yep. I tried it. Anything inside <version></version> (or any other unsupported tag for that matter) is silently ignored by old versions of ES.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Then yes, that's the solution for all our problems.

Nismo

@fieldofcows My theme it's being made with video support in mind so if I don't include version tags it still working with latest ES? Just because if I do that, I need to modify a lot of lines of code... and my theme desing it's not made for old ES.

fieldofcows

@Nismo I haven't made any changes to support the <version> tags yet :) But when/if that change is made the use of the tags will be purely optional: if you want to support non-video ES then you can use the tags, if you don't want to support non-video ES then you can leave them out.

Nismo

@fieldofcows And what happen when apart from video view you use things like this (from carbon with video support):

I use it on my theme too, and don't remember but in pixel theme uses it too...

I suposse we need to divide the views to make it backward compatible and place the version tag...

Anyway i think your solution it's the best one for all...

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@fieldofcows And what happen when apart from video view you use things like this (from carbon with video support):

<view name="basic, detailed, video">

I believe that is already ignored by the non-video ES.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Yeah I imagine that, we need to separate views in order to place the "version" tag. It's a little bit more work but that way we can have the compatibility we are looking for...

Nismo

So I think if finally we use the "version" workaround, the themes uploaded to github must be backward compatible so no problems for anybody...

fieldofcows

I've made the change to my ES to support the <version> tag to try it out and it works fine. I've set the current version of the theme to '4' whereas the non-video ES uses version '3'. This means this code works on the video supported ES (with my fix which is currently not in the RetroPie fork) but is ignored on older versions of ES:

<version minimum="4">
   [video config]
</version>

What does everyone else think of this solution? Is it the right way to fix this?

lilbud

@fieldofcows I'm thinking this would be the right way. Having to add video support to 80+ systems is not the way I'd imagne spending an afternoon.

herb_fargus

@fieldofcows looks like the best option to me. I suppose if grid view is ever incorporated this will be a solution for that too.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I'm not totally sure but version 4 is not for kids support?

mattrixk

@fieldofcows Any theme that supports @Zigurana's child-friendly icons also needs to be version 4. Does that mean those themes also need to support video previews?

Edit: Hehe, @Nismo beat me to it by 30 seconds.

Nismo

@mattrixk lol, yes @fieldofcows commit must be changed to version 5...

And for me, yes it's the right way...

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@fieldofcows I'm not totally sure but version 4 is not for kids support?

Well, this is the problem with multiple ES forks. The RetroPie fork is still on version 3:

https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-core/src/ThemeData.cpp#L98

This would naturally go up to 4 to support this change. However, if there are themes out there for a different fork then it is going to cause problems...