Rainmeter Skin Editor

[KianM]

Hello,

I'm a developer and I was thinking about making a Rainmeter skin editor
It would allow you to load in your skins, preview them, add meters, and meta data, in a relatively simple manner.
It's not a replacement for the simple text editors - however, one would be included - perhaps with syntax hi-lighting.

How many people would be interested?



---
KianM

[jsmorley]

I understand the impulse behind this thinking. It has come up repeatedly before with our users and developers, and we have decided not to pursue it.

I'd have to hear more details about what you have in mind, but suspect that I for one would not be interested, as much for principled as practical reasons. I think any attempt to make a GUI for creating skins is doomed to be a half-baked effort and the only effect would be to stop new users from learning Rainmeter, and being useless to users who do know Rainmeter. This has long been the agreed opinion of the team here.

Rainmeter is infinitely flexible and capable. No GUI is ever going to approach 10% of what is the tool is capable of, and I am not interested in supporting an application that just knocks out cookie cutter code. Rainmeter is not a programming language or something that lends itself to "drag and drop" or other WYSIWYG type of editing. a Meter or Measure is not a "control" that you can just drop somewhere, size with the mouse, and then set attributes with "properties". It's not how Rainmeter was envisioned nor how it is designed. By the time you build in the infinite flexibility and power of what is capable in Rainmeter, you are going to basically be back to a text editor. Notepad++ with RainLexer works really well and in my personal opinion, is the right tool for the job. That and having the manual close at hand.

Rainmeter is a tool. I like to think of it with the analogy of the radio vs the guitar. Both make music. One you just turn on and push buttons and you can get someone else's music. The other you have to learn. It takes a bit of time to learn to use but you make YOUR music, and the possibilities are endless. I would hate to see a "dumbed-down" Rainmeter. Just use some other "gadget" application, there are several.

So I wish you well in your effort. We welcome folks adding tools and such to help users with Rainmeter. I have done one or two myself. I'll be interested in seeing what you come up with, as there may be some "sweet spot" where a tool with well managed expectations could actually add some value. However, trying to make Rainmeter into something that is "easy" to use to create skins is not where we would like to see developer skills applied. How about some clever plugin, or get involved with the core Rainmeter code?

[codybear]

I too had thought about this idea, and had started on a moch (sp?) up of the design and implementation of settings and what not. But I soon realized that I was way in too far over my head and had gave up on the program haha.
Mine was more of a way to help with rapid development than a WYSIWYG editor. It basically loaded the INI file (and other rainmeter files) and allowed you to search for a command and then it asked for what value you wanted for the command and would insert it into the document. It was more indepth than that, but that's the main overview of what I was trying to do. That way people still had to learn the code but it helped them out (showing proper syntax, commands and hopefully a debugger eventually). Maybe someday I'll go back at that project. But for now I have far too many projects to take care of first.

[sgtevmckay]

As Morley has pointed out, This is not something that the Dev team has any intent to pursue.
As I have pointed out here, and at other venues; We will not stop anyone wishing to tackle creating WYSIWYG editor as a third party tool.
I have posted this many times in the last 2+ years and have had no takers, just complainers.

That being said; there is a massive call for this type of tool.
So much so that you may not see the response that you may be looking for in these forums, as there is a large group of folks that avoid Rainmeter do to a lack of a GUI builder tool.
So the response in a positive may be minimal. you can look into the past release notices and other skin release areas/posts at LifeHacker for an example.

I will say that we have never detoured the concept of someone making a third party tool.
I would let you know upfront that our expectations for such a tool would be high in the extreme, as many of us here have found tools similar to that used by Samurize to be buggy and limited in use and imagination by the end user. It seems that sooner or later all the skins start to look the same, based on Builder limitations. Again I would hold up Samurize as an example.
So; if you intend to tackle this, I will be watching closely and be highly critical of its direction, especially if you are looking to have your program approved by Rainmeter.

I can not say that I am wholly in favor of such a tool, but my edict of expanding Rainmeter may prove that such a tool is necessary to move Rainmeter forward and in newer directions and areas of use.
If you decide to do this, I would start be creating a Google Code page to build and release at, and since the code for Rainmeter is open source, it can be referenced at any time.

Let us know if, and how, you intend to move forward, and please keep us in the loop as we will be most curious as you proceed

[sea1monkey2]

I think this is on topic.
I personally wouldn't mind something that would have the look of rainlexer, with a screen that shows an interactive like update of what you do, and it highlights your broken bits of code like endless brackets and such

[Jarhead]

Please make it.
It will be very difficult, maybe impossible to produce complete skins just with a visual editor, but I don't think this should be your aim. A skin editor for rainmeter could be so *inredibly* useful to set properties like position and dimension that take so*much*time to me to get right. You see, I spend hours positioning the meters in my skin, while this could be done with a few clicks if we had a gui editor. The same goes for sizing, colors and such.
Then, of course, one should be able to open his skin and set measures and code manually. But why shouldn't we let a program do the hard work regarding cordinates, color codes, meter names etc.?
Even simple real time preview of your code could cut times down, even if it wouldn't be as beautiful as a wysiwyg.

I do have very basic coding skills. If you pursue this project, contact me, in case I could be of any help.

[santa_ryan]

Jarhead,
Download GIMP and use it to position stuff.
Make a "list of the meters" all using Y=R so their "listed" on your screen in a single skin, then screenshot it. After that just copy what you want and move it to where you want, and record the coordinates on the screen. You can easily position stuff this way.

[Jarhead]

No way! I'd like to hug you right now

[santa_ryan]

... I can't tell if your being sarcastic or not.

[Church Punk]

How a bout getting a better editor instead of notepad? e-text editor is a powerful tool, or any other power toy like emacs :P