On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Udo Richter udo_richter@gmx.de wrote:
This is mostly what the VDR skin interface already provides: A semantically structured description of the interface. Most skins translate this into a bitmapped OSD view, but they don't have to. The skincurses plugin for example uses the text console. VDR itself never uses the OSD directly, only through the two standard skins.
That only works if the default vdr menu layout (i.e. a simple name:value list) fits your needs. If you need a different layout you have to draw directly to the osd (with the side effect that the skincurses plugin won't work).
Sure. But as I said: VDR only uses the skin interface. Plugins do use the OSD directly, but currently expect it to be bitmapped. Vectorized structures could be provided by custom skins using plugin-to-plugin communications.
IMHO a bitmapped interface is a good compromise of flexibility and simplicity, while vectorized systems tend to be quite complex. (think of XUL (mozilla) or XAML (microsoft).)
However, there's no reason why, for example, a plugin like text2skin could not provide advanced rendering to other plugins.
If support for a high res/color OSD is present in the VDR core, why would you need a plugin to provide anything to any other plugin? Unless you mean a plugin that handles different ways of supplying the OSD such as the different techniques previously mentioned (xml, html, etc etc)?