Kodi skin with big fonts

This skin based on skin.confluence, but scaling most GUI elements up. An early targeting system was a RPI 1 with CRT TV on composite output, but it is also useable on modern screens.

Versions

Newest supported skin version for Kodi 19.x (Matrix): 4.7.14 (=> master branch).
Newest supported skin version for Kodi 18.x (Leia): 4.5.5 (=> release_4.5.5 branch).
Newest supported skin version for Kodi 17.x (Krypton): 3.1.6 (=> release_3.1.6 branch)
Older skin version for Kodi 15.2-16.x: See release_0.8 branch.

Changes

The following changes were made:

• General downscaling of GUI from 720p to 480p.
• Increase font size to made text more readable.
• Add VT323 font.
• Increase width of many GUI elements to reflect the styling issues due big fonts for the confluence theme.
• Omiting scrolling of text if possible. (Scrolling of text consumes a lot of CPU/GPU time.)
• Added theme with opaque background textures. This could reduce flickering, see (Settings>Appearance).
• Added color set with better contrast.

How to build (short)

• ./parseTemplates.py
• ./buildPackage.py [--pack]
• cd /dev/shm ; zip -r skin.confluence.480.zip skin.confluence.480

How to build (long)

• Run ./parseTemplates.py to translate the XML files from ./templates into ./out. The 'out'-folder was defined as skin directory in addon.xml.
• Use ./buildPackage.py to export the data for a release of the skin. Add --pack to compress the images with Kodi's TexturePacker. If not installed, you could compile the tool with ./TexturePackerBuild.sh! See ./buildPackage.py --help for more information.

Notes for developers

• The sed scripts in ./templates/sed could also be used for other skins. They wrap the values of many tags like , , , by a function. This is dual to font resizing, but more flexible.

• I was disappointed about the capabilities of Kodi's $VAR and $PARAM capabilities (or simply misunderstand how to use them…) and attached an own variant for variables. ./templates contains the normal skin definitions but some values was replaced by {variable} or {{Python code}} token.

• ./templates/config.py is containing the definition of constants.

Workflow for updates on new confluence versions (sketch)

1. Checkout branch 'original_skin'. This branch holds the used reference of skin.confluence.

2. Update static files like addon.xml, changelog.txt and the folders: 720p, resources, languages, media, colors, fonts and backgrounds.

   Commit these changes now, to cherry-pick them in step 4/5.

3. Replace xml files in ./templates with new files of original confluence skin (./720p) and commit changes again.

4. Checkout branch 'sedChangesOnly' and cherry-pick changes of 2. Replace xml files like in 3., and finally run sed scripts. ( cd templates ; rm *.xml; git checkout original_skin *.xml; cd sed; ./runSubstitutions.sh *.sed)

   Commit changes.

5. Rebase unstable branch on new sedChangesOnly. This should lift the manual changes of the templates upon the new automated. This step required manually work, especially if new xml files was added. Run ./parseTemplates.py --force to check if templates are still valid.

6. Build new package ( ./buildPackage.py --dest /dev/shm -t -p -f )

7. Zip result, .i.e.
   cd /dev/shm ; zip -r skin.confluence.480.zip skin.confluence.480

8. Copy skin-zip to media center and resolve errors.

Testing of changes

```
./parseTemplates.py -f --out ~/.kodi/addons/skin.confluence.480/out/
 kodi-send --action="ReloadSkin()"
```