Rookie Advise

[Nutball]

Let me first apologize for the ridiculously simple question.

I am new to Studio and am just trying to get my feet wet with very simple UI changes before doing anything significant. The first thing I want to do is simply get rid of some of the nearly static images on the header and footer since they are trying their best to burn in my plasma.

In particular I want to ditch the clock and weather notifications in the header and the "Options" menu from the footer. So, I pulled up studio and found the notifications area and simply deleted the clock and weather sections from "Notifications and clock". I did something similar for the "options" menu in the footer.

Everything seems to work fine while in Sage but I have noticed that pulling up studio while using my newly modified STV can take a long time (sometimes over 5 minutes before for the spinning circles to stop). In addition, selecting different sections of the "UI components" window will often retrigger the spinning circles and I have to wait several more minutes. If I revert back to the original STV, this issue goes away.

So obviously I am doing something improperly. Is there a better way to remove these items? Should I have found a way to turn off the display of the items and not completely delete them out of the STV?

Thanks for any advise,
Nutball

[tmiranda]

My guess is that you deleted widgets that are needed in other parts of the STV. If the widget is (was) black, it means other widgets in the STV reference it and you should not delete it.

Instead you should find out where it is referenced, make one of theose references the primary reference, and then go back and delete. (Widgets in italics are references and can be deleted without causing a problem.)

If you do not have GKusnick's Studio Tools installed, you should do that immediately. It will save you time and grief.

Welcome to Studio.

[GKusnick]

Note that when deleting code in Studio, it's not enough to delete the topmost widget at the point of attachment; that will leave orphaned widgets in the file. You must select all of the widgets you want to remove (and only those widgets) before pressing Delete.

So my guess is that you may have deleted too little (leaving a lot of orphaned widgets) or too much (leaving malformed code that's throwing a lot of exceptions). To check for orphaned widgets, scroll down to the bottom of the file and look for random widgets that don't belong at top level. Also check for a "Circular dependencies" item, which would be a sign that you deleted the entry point of a loop without deleting the loop body.

To check for exceptions, look in your debug logs, or try running with a console window open (see p. 230 of the V7 manual).

There's a command in my Studio Tools plugin called Select Safe Subtree that makes deleting code simpler, if that's of interest to you.

But you're probably right that just putting an "If false" above the code you want to suppress is a simpler and safer way to go.

All of that said, you're really going about this the wrong way by changing a few widgets and then saving the entire STV to a new file. What you want to do is a UID File Difference against the stock STV and save just your changes in STVI form. Then you can package that STVI as a UI Mod plugin that will be automatically applied every time the stock STV is loaded. This way you're not duplicating any code, and your changes will automatically carry over to updated versions of the stock STV, so you won't have to keep merging them back manually.

[Nutball]

Thanks all for the quick advice. I did delete a couple of black colored widgets and it did leave a mess of orphaned files. I have downloaded Studio Tools and will give things another go this week in a more careful manner. I will also try the UID file difference and create a STVi.

-Nutball

[Fuzzy]

For something like this, you may be better off looking for a point in the STV that has a conditional that could be changed to check a property. (like Nutball/HideClock=true). This will actually limit the overall changes done in the STV, make the import itself smaller, and have less impact on other imports that may come along.

[Nutball]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

For something like this, you may be better off looking for a point in the STV that has a conditional that could be changed to check a property. (like Nutball/HideClock=true). This will actually limit the overall changes done in the STV, make the import itself smaller, and have less impact on other imports that may come along.

Fuzzy,

Is it generally better to modify an existing conditional by adding an AND statement with a check to my "Nutball/HideClock" property or should I simply add a extra conditional level in hierarchy tree?
i.e.
if (existing conditional && Nutball/HideClock)
display clock...

vs.

if (existing conditional)
if (Nutball/HideClock)
display clock...

Which method is better as far as compatibility with other plugins?

By the way, thanks all for the advice, I was able to get generate a STVI and implement it via the plugin system without any significant issues. (should have tried it earlier).

Last question, I am currently implementing a local SageTVPluginsDev.xml file for the plugin manifest while i tweak things. This is working fine but I can't seem to find a way to have two different plugins within SageTVPluginsDev.xml file. Only the first plugin in the manifest shows up in the available plugin list within sage. Is this a limit to the Dev manifest or have I simply messed up the syntax. (I am not at home so I cant attach a copy of my SageTVPluginsDev.xml file)

Thanks,
Nutball

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Nutball

Fuzzy,

Is it generally better to modify an existing conditional by adding an AND statement with a check to my "Nutball/HideClock" property or should I simply add a extra conditional level in hierarchy tree?
i.e.
if (existing conditional && Nutball/HideClock)
display clock...

vs.

if (existing conditional)
if (Nutball/HideClock)
display clock...

Which method is better as far as compatibility with other plugins?

Option 2 add a condition changing the existing will effect other plugins who may not want to rely on your extra condition.

Originally Posted by Nutball

Last question, I am currently implementing a local SageTVPluginsDev.xml file for the plugin manifest while i tweak things. This is working fine but I can't seem to find a way to have two different plugins within SageTVPluginsDev.xml file. Only the first plugin in the manifest shows up in the available plugin list within sage. Is this a limit to the Dev manifest or have I simply messed up the syntax. (I am not at home so I cant attach a copy of my SageTVPluginsDev.xml file)

Thanks,
Nutball

Must be a syntax error are you enclosing the whole thing correctly? You can have multiples in a single dev xml.

the entire xml needs to be encased in

<PluginRepository version="1.0.672">
</PluginRepository>

With each plugin encased in

<SageTVPlugin>
</SageTVPlugin>

Check your server log if you are having errors it will print out if there is a parsing error. My guess is your second is outside the </PluginRepository> tag

[Fuzzy]

It may actually be that he doens't HAVE a <PluginRepository> tag. I think some of the early examples floating around didn't include it, just having a single <SageTVPlugin> element, and this actually seems to work (for only one element, obviously).

[Nutball]

Tag team help is a great thing...

Plucky, I was hoping Option 2 was the better approach since that is what I have working right now.

Fuzzy, you were right, I had neither the <PluginRepository> nor the </PluginRepository> tags. Everything still worked fine with only a single plugin but Sage won't recognize anything beyond the first plugin without the <PluginRepository> tags.

Thanks,
Nut

[GKusnick]

By definition a well-formed XML file has a single root element. Adding a second SageTVPlugin element without an enclosing parent element makes it bad XML.