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My First Skin Help

Get help with creating, editing & fixing problems with skins
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Yincognito
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by Yincognito »

MourningStar wrote: July 21st, 2021, 8:37 pmsuggestion : enable the "Font Chooser" into the context menu.
Things don't work that way, MourningStar. :lol: The context menu is a Windows (i.e. operating system) element that the Rainmeter application (through the options provided in it by the developers) can change or tweak accordingly. What one can do in a skin is an entirely different business, it's just an image drawn by Rainmeter on the screen at various intervals and used to simulate various "controls" if desired. The latter can't influence the former, if the required options are not aleady provided by the Rainmeter application.

Example: You buy a car and change its painting or add some other "gadgets" to it (that's what you do when designing a skin). You can't build a new engine for that car or a new transmission if the car vendor doesn't make that possible by providing the right tools or environment for it (that's what you'd need to be able to change the context menu of the skin).

Bottom line, our ability to change the context menu of the skin is limited by:
- the operating system (for example, you can't turn that menu into a spinning wheel)
- the Rainmeter application (for example, by not providing the ability of nesting context menus yet)
MourningStar wrote: July 21st, 2021, 8:54 pmThought on this a little more. I have a font app I use to visualize all my fonts because I can only associate very very few fonts with their names. I can call up this skin to do that - I think I may mess around with it and present my second skin - HA!
Excellent! Glad you found some use to it. ;-)
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MourningStar
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by MourningStar »

Yincognito wrote: July 21st, 2021, 9:07 pm Things don't work that way, MourningStar. ...
ok - then how about this. have 2 skins, a non-chooser & a chooser - then :

r-clik, pick context item to unload (current 'non-chooser' skin) and load 'chooser' skin -
user scrolls to desired font -
r-cliks, pick context item that saves or reloads 'non-chooser' with the desired font.
(wow - that was too complicated to even type, maybe not huh?)

or this :

A context item that show/hides the 'chooser' - :confused:

(btw, I prefer this font scroller of yours over the 'nested' cascading menu option discussed earlier!)
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Yincognito
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by Yincognito »

MourningStar wrote: July 21st, 2021, 9:23 pm ok - then how about this. have 2 skins, a non-chooser & a chooser - then :

r-clik, pick context item to unload (current 'non-chooser' skin) and load 'chooser' skin -
user scrolls to desired font -
r-cliks, pick context item that saves or reloads 'non-chooser' with the desired font.
(wow - that was too complicated to even type, maybe not huh?)

or this :

A context item that show/hides the 'chooser' - :confused:

(btw, I prefer this font scroller of yours over the 'nested' cascading menu option discussed earlier!)
Yes, what you said would be doable indeed. Your main skin, which on choosing, say, a "Choose Font" title from the usual right-click custom menu, would activate / load the font chooser skin which will then save the chosen / scrolled font name or index back to the main skin's variables file and update it. Today it's a bit late to see what can be done regarding this, since I'll probably relax a bit watching a movie and such, but tomorrow I'll see how this will evolve. :thumbup:

P.S. I already included such an approach in the main skin through toggling the hidden status of the "Font: ..." meter, but maybe it's better to have the font chooser as a separate skin, sort of like a child / modal window style in Windows. Some combo box system would be nice as well, besides the ability to scroll over, but that will require a bit of work. Will see about this tomorrow - thanks for the idea. ;-)
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MourningStar
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by MourningStar »

Yincognito wrote: July 21st, 2021, 9:51 pm... Will see about this tomorrow - thanks for the idea. ;-)
cool ...

another (hammerhead) idea:

I use SilverAzide's Gadgets and on most, in the upper-right, is a small wrench that when cliked opens a skin settings-type display that does lots of different skin-altering stuff depending on the gadget.

just throwing this out there ...
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Yincognito
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by Yincognito »

MourningStar wrote: July 22nd, 2021, 6:07 pm cool ...

another (hammerhead) idea:

I use SilverAzide's Gadgets and on most, in the upper-right, is a small wrench that when cliked opens a skin settings-type display that does lots of different skin-altering stuff depending on the gadget.

just throwing this out there ...
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Image
LOL, ok, that can be done too, but I'm thinking more to a general solution anyone can use to choose fonts, similar to jsmorley's RainRGB (but using the skin instead of an executable). Whether that can be triggered by context menu or a little icon is relatively easily adjustable.

I already have most of the things I envision working, just didn't have the time to do it. Guess you'l have to wait a bit more till I get the chance to finalize this the way I want. :???:
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MourningStar
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by MourningStar »

Yincognito wrote: July 22nd, 2021, 6:59 pm...Guess you'l have to wait a bit more till I get the chance to finalize this the way I want. :???:
hey, no sweat and definitely no urgency. I can see from your activity here you have much on your plate. And, restless soul that I be, there are other roads to travel and none better traveled than the ones one maps for themselves.

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MourningStar
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by MourningStar »

Yincognito wrote: July 21st, 2021, 7:19 pm... in case the OP is interested, here's the "Font Chooser" at work in his own skin ...
Observation and question :

as I scroll thru the fonts I am observing not seeing all of the fonts on my system. according to the rm manual, I believe they should be appearing. I have many that I have added a while back but I did check to make sure they conform (i.e. ttf/otf). Thoughts?

I have substitued the skin text 'Font : XXXXXXX' with a simple, unobtrusive '*'. All I need to see is the style, which real-time updates via scroll, don't really care to know it's name.With this minor mod and resolving the missing fonts I should be done with this.
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Yincognito
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by Yincognito »

MourningStar wrote: July 22nd, 2021, 8:57 pmas I scroll thru the fonts I am observing not seeing all of the fonts on my system. according to the rm manual, I believe they should be appearing. I have many that I have added a while back but I did check to make sure they conform (i.e. ttf/otf). Thoughts?
Only the fonts from Control Panel - Fonts (and others) are displayed. The fonts you placed in the \@Resources\Fonts subfolder of your skin have nothing to do with those until they are actualy installed in Windows (by right clicking on the TTF/OTF file and choosing Install, if I remember correctly), if that's what you're asking. In other words, placing the font in the \@Resources\Fonts subfolder of your skin doesn't install it in Windows, it only makes it available to Rainmeter.

Other than that, there are other possible commands to get the list of fonts, as I mentioned earlier in this thread. Some commands get more fonts, some get less. That's not a problem as the command can be replaced easily, but the Substitute in the measure will have to be changed accordingly as well. I will see what can be done about it before I will finalize the approach in the near future.
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MourningStar
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by MourningStar »

^
since my sys has 300+ fonts and my interest is in less than 20% of them I prefer to locate them so that only these will scroll
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Yincognito
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Re: My First Skin Help

Post by Yincognito »

MourningStar wrote: July 22nd, 2021, 9:56 pm ^
since my sys has 300+ fonts and my interest is in less than 20% of them I prefer to locate them so that only these will scroll
If you're talking about listing / browsing only through the fonts from a specific folder (could be \@Resources\Fonts or any other), this is possible too, though more steps are required. Just be a bit patient, let's take it one step at a time. Both all fonts and fonts located in a specific folder will eventually be available for browsing, but in this order and in separate (I think - not sure yet) implementations.
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