VIEWPORTS SIM & TESTBUILD ::: WPS Creators read this!

[Angryman_H10]

This information is especially for the WPS Creators ...

In the not so far future viewports will be implemented to SVN builds and its expected that this will break nearly all available themes which made use of multifont, scrolling lines and so on. Viewports are only downwards compatible to themes which didnt make use of these patches.

The multifont, scroliing lines, custom list position patches will die because viewports will take control of all these functionalities.
But it should be possible to port all themes to viewports.

WHAT ARE VIEWPORTS?
I would recommend you read the following article:
Viewports > Main > Wiki


A SHORT EXPLANATION HOW VIEWPORTS WORK:
The WPS usage of viewports is as followed...
If you want to make use of the viewport capabilities you first need to define a viewport.
You can place a viewport with x and y coordinates as you did with customline. A viewport has its own width and height. So margin patches are not required anymore. You can define a font and the color of the font (That makes the multifont patch useless).
The background color of the viewport will be ignored if a WPS background is set.
After you defined a viewport just use the typical tags to display what you want. Everything which follows after your viewport definition will be drawn linebased in your last defined viewport as long as you do not define a new viewport. This means if you want to have each line pixel-precise placed, each line has to be drawn in its own viewport or the lineheight by the font will be used to define the position of a new line.

The syntax of a viewport is defined like this: %V|x|y|width|height| font|fgcolor|bgcolor |
The fonts are defined as usual in the .cfg file of your WPS but numbers 0 and 1 are reserved for FONT_SYSFIXED and FONT_WPS. So if you define userfonts they start with 2.

An Example viewport using userfont1 and displaying the current time:
%V|32|114|26|7|2|C8BFB5|000000| <-- 0 and 1 reserved, userfont1 = 2
%cH:%cM

Another example (showing up more differences):
%V|0|115 |122|5|1|B5B5B5|0000 00| <-- We create another viewport to hold our progressbar with an y-coordinate of 115px
%pb|2|85|122|0 | <-- The pb tag itself contains also an y-coordinate (last value) we set it to 0px because its drawn in our viewport

Actually the above example isnt as clean as it could be. Why? If this Viewport would really only hold the progressbar why should its start at x=0?
And why do we need to define x=85px for the progressbar? A cleaner version would look like this:
%V|85|115|122|5|1|B5 B5B5|000000| <- Now we placed the viewport exactly where we want to draw the upper left corner of our progressbar
%pb|2|0|122|0| <- The progressbar tag only contains a height value of 2 and its width of 122, we set x and y to zero

I hope this demonstrates a bit what viewports are meant to be... You can define areas (viewports) in your WPS. All followed tags which follow a
viewport definition are drawn in that viewport. Measurements are then taken from the viewports x and y coordinate not from your screen anymore.

I would recommend that you take a look at the flyspray page of viewports at the rockbox forums:
FS#8385: Viewports

I also ported the Lavenia theme for the H10 (5G/6G) models to viewports.
You can have a look in the WPS to see how it works.
iwantanimac compiled Windows Simulators which make it easier to test your WPS's...

ONLY LIMITATION RIGHT NOW IS THAT CUSTOM LIST POSITION IS NOT YET SUPPORTED BUT WILL BE...
and the configuration setting for list position can be added easiliy as soon as viewports offer it.
Its also not 100% guaranteed that there will be no further changes how viewports are drawn. This means as long
as viewports are developed themes could need to be reedited again.

SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN UPDATING OR CREATING A NEW THEME FOR VIEWPORTS... HERE YOU GO...
iwantanimac viewports simulators (H10 5G and 20G)
H10 Lavenia Viewports WPS (5G/6G Models)
Mono's H10 (5G/6G) viewports build
Mono's H10 (20G)viewports build

WHATS UP NEXT???
As already mentioned viewports will be able to replace the custom-list-position patch. That means that you can also define
the x and y positions of your browser screen. More information is not yet available but its quite sure that you can even play
more around with the screen elements. E.g. placing the statusbar at the bottom, seperatly define the position of the scrollbar
or the icons... Maybe other screens will be also accessible by viewports like the radio screen. We will see how far the
rockbox devs will push this.

Cheerio Angry

[baobab68]

Angryman - thank you for that explanation. With that information it suddenly becomes clear how powerful viewports are.

[Angryman_H10]

Youre welcome... i updated the examples section a bit to explain it a bit better...

[blackthunder]

I played around a bit with the viewports and found it quite easy to edit the themes. A lot less coding will be involved in making new themes I think.

I'm currently testing with success on my h20
thanks

[TheMono]

First ever Viewport build of mine is here:

5/6 GB:

rockbox5gb20080113.z ip

20 GB:

rockbox20gb20080113. zip

While I'm here I'd like to thank Angry again for his work here. Phenomenal explanation.

[mykel--]

preliminary trials suggest this is a great build well done

im still getting "could not read bmp" for pictureflow for nearly every cover.bmp, but otherwise ... much better than the last build.

cool!

[iwantanimac]

Perhaps once i recode it ill release my Lavenia-X theme. It's a slight mod of Lavenia with some extra displays and visual modifications.

Thanks to TheMono for making a build for it. Just a question, though, what is included in them, exactly?

Glad i was able to help with the sims. =)

[TheMono]

It should be functionally the same as the last one if you ignore the WPS side of things.

[TheKind_H10]

hClix will be released next week-end i guess.

[AsusFreak!]

I will wait for the custom line position build otherwise I would have to make a complete redesign of my HardRain theme.

Thanx to Mono, Angry and Imac doing these great jobs...

[TheMono]

While we are being a little experimental here... Anyone willing to take the risk can use the following builds as a test. It is virtually identical to the previous build, just a couple of updates from SVN, but the main difference is I patched in:
FS#8379: power consumption issues PP502x/5G

Haven't had enough of a play to say anything other than that it seems to work...

5gb:

rockbox5gb20080117.z ip

20gb:

rockbox20gb20080117. zip

Edit: I know there isn't a lot of point posting a 20gb build with that patch, but I'm more curious to be sure it doesn't break anything there.

[Angryman_H10]

Originally Posted by TheMono

Haven't had enough of a play to say anything other than that it seems to work...
[...]
Edit: I know there isn't a lot of point posting a 20gb build with that patch, but I'm more curious to be sure it doesn't break anything there.

Encountered some sound gaps from time to time with this patch...
But in my case (with my build its acceptable for testing how battery life behaves...)

?Why shouldnt that patch be suitable for 20G players? They should also (if it works) benefit from the power optimizations included?

[TheMono]

I'm just not sure how much further the 20gb battery life can be pushed...

[Angryman_H10]

Even much more than the battery life of a 5gb or 6gb because the battery is a different one with more capacitiy .

[TheMono]

I was under the impression the 20gb had already been tweaked considerably, to the point where Rockbox beat out the OF for battery life, in contrast to the 5/6gb having the opposite effect.

[iwantanimac]

No, i'm pretty sure there hasn't been a great deal of tweaking in SVN for either at any stage. Any additions should be good, as long as they aren't detrimental to performance (Which from Angryman's description, it seems there are).

The 5GB needs a lot of work.

[TheKind_H10]

I won't port hClix while .draw files aren't working. Maybe it will works after the Summer of Code

[iwantanimac]

.draw files? What're they?

[Angryman_H10]

so finally Viewports are committed... Needed much longer than I expected...