Rainmeter Skin Editor

[santa_ryan]

Use the hotkey ability of notepad++ and have it save your changes and then send the !RainmeterRefresh bang to rainmeter on a key press.

[presha]

the only think i can think of that would be useful is a text editor with a real time display, meaning it previews the entire skin above or below or something the text editor, and updates in real time as you make changes to it

exactly what i need. something like a window split in two parts:
left - the preview with ability to move meters around (I hate editing and refreshing the skins dozens of times to display the meter in a right place)
right - the code itself.

the closest thing that comes to my mind is samurize config editor. Its like painting your skin on your desktop.
As I said before such editor would do no harm, it could only make more ppl start creating skins, editing 50 lines of code to display some simple meter scares some ppl away (like myself haha)

[santa_ryan]

For one...
Why don't you just GIMP (Or photoshop) and make a mockup for your X and Y coordinates from the origin. I said that before, and i stand by my opinion in that being one of the best ways to make a skin quicker.

and two...
If you using notepad++, you can use hotkeys to run things.

1. Press F5

• Enter in "C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe" !RainmeterRefresh (Or where ever your rainmeter install is)

• Press Save...

• Type in a name for the hotkey (Refresh Rainmeter)

• Select your Hotkey

• Press OK

You now have a hotkey to refresh rainmeter.

Mines Ctrl R, so I just press Ctrl S, then Ctrl R and I see all of my changes instantly.

[jsmorley]

I understand your reasoning, but I am compelled to repeat. It's not that a WYSIWYG skin editor is undesirable simply due to the fact that it would discourage folks from learning Rainmeter. There is an element of that, but the problem is really that it is impossible. Rainmeter is not Guitar Hero, it's a guitar. It's not paint-by-numbers, it's oil paint, a brush and a canvas. There are unlimited numbers of ways you can construct a skin, to both allow for the kind of creativity and pushing the envelope we see from our community of users, and to allow the personal style of skin coding that means we don't box authors into a set way to do things. A simple String meter has thousands of ways you can do things with all the settings, using dynamic variables, using Calc measures and !Bangs, integrating Lua, using meter styles, the list is really endless. A skin editor that supports this is by definition impossible or at best something crappy that does harm to the Rainmeter community. I can't imagine how awful it would be to have Rainmeter turned into some "cookie-cutter" application.

Editing or creating Rainmeter skins is not for everyone. I readily acknowledge that. It is not our intention to try and make it so. The unlimited and unfettered nature of Rainmeter that has led to the unbelievably creative and beautiful skins out there is at irreconcilable odds with turning Rainmeter into something that you can just drag widgets around in and save.

If you have a decent text editor like Notepad++ (and use poiru's Rainmeter plugin for it) and are willing to spend just a day or two wrapping your head around Rainmeter, it's not hard at all. However if what you really want a player piano instead of a real piano, there are alternatives to Rainmeter. Widows Sidebar, Google Gadgets, etc.

[taiiat]

rainmeter might not be guitar hero, and it might not be a coloring book, but with those references i think rainmeter is something like a box of crayons, size of this box being somewhere around 15,000 crayons of all different colors

NoteTabPro FTW!!

Some handsome devil even created a Clipbook for Rainmeter already!

you've got to be kidding me. not to burst your bubble but that program looks like a text editor with too many buttons, and not enough support for customs.
far as i'm concerned, there's no point in any other editor other than notepad++. is there anything it doesn't do? nope. i mean comeon, a text editor that you can play tetris in is gotta be amazing
but seriously, notepad++ already does just about anything you might want to do to text. anything it doesn't support would be pointless and impossible in plain text files.
also, if that program is supposed to be a notepad of sorts, why exactly does it support bold and italics? you can't do those things in plain text. and comments? and non-printing characters? now that's just a notepad that can also do word processing, but does neither very well

[jsmorley]

rainmeter might not be guitar hero, and it might not be a coloring book, but with those references i think rainmeter is something like a box of crayons, size of this box being somewhere around 15,000 crayons of all different colors you've got to be kidding me. not to burst your bubble but that program looks like a text editor with too many buttons, and not enough support for customs.
far as i'm concerned, there's no point in any other editor other than notepad++. is there anything it doesn't do? nope. i mean comeon, a text editor that you can play tetris in is gotta be amazing
but seriously, notepad++ already does just about anything you might want to do to text. anything it doesn't support would be pointless and impossible in plain text files.
also, if that program is supposed to be a notepad of sorts, why exactly does it support bold and italics? you can't do those things in plain text. and comments? and non-printing characters? now that's just a notepad that can also do word processing, but does neither very well

1) Please refrain from grave digging posts.

2) If you don't want to use something that is created or suggested by another user here, then don't. Your tone is perilously close to just what we don't want here however. We are all friends of Rainmeter, and to the extent possible with one million users, friends with each other. That is how we want the interactions here to be. Constructive criticism is welcomed by all. They shouldn't post something here if they don't want that. However, constructive criticism takes the form of "here is another way I would have done that", not "here is why that sucks"...

[JoBu]

Thanks for that Jeff.

I'd just like to add to anyone looking for a gui text editor, go to CNET and read the reviews.
Grab the free download and try it out for a few days, decide for yourself.

In my humble opinion, NTP is a great editor with many features that are intuitive, customizable and help to keep things clean and efficient.
Clipbooks make it easy to apply a set syntax anywhere you want.
Tabs make editing multiple pages a thing of beauty and real-time code testing simple to do.
Add or remove buttons to your hearts content. I have a button that makes a blank Rainmeter skin template, with my sigs and breaks all set up for me.
It loads fast, is resource light and never ever crashes.
Awesome RegEx capabilities.
Support for multiple languages and functions.
Has been my favorite for years. And I do have Note++.

I have yet to find Tetris. I am looking though.