Hi Matej,
mato konecny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've just started hacking elisa (adjusting font sizes to be readable on
> my TV etc).
> Eventually, I want to implement IMDB rating/tagline functionality based
> on filename/folder name of the video. Now only video thumbnail is
> available. I've started from amazon metadata provider. The idea of how
> components are connected is clear to me up to the point of retrieving
> information from HTTP client. I'm bit confused how the widget
> (decorator) comes into action, also in combination with the frontend.
Decorators are a flexible system that allow an external plugin to modify
("decorate") an existing piece of UI. Most of the existing decorators
you will find in elisa decorate a list controller by adding items to it.
For example the main carousel menu is a circular list, in which a
decorator could insert a new entry.
Decorators are associated to a given controller via its path, and they
are automatically called right after the controller is created.
> The tutorial explains how to use only one controller for the frontend,
> but my idea was to provide poster and some textual information and
> rating. As far as I've found out, this needs a lot of modifications on
> the poblesec controller side, which, to be honest, is still bit
> mysterious ;)
True, our tutorials are a bit outdated, they date back from when we
still hadn't rewritten the main UI with the new architecture, hence they
deal with "standalone" controllers.
Integration with the current frontend, poblesec, simply requires writing
a new controller and adding a decorator for one of the existing
controllers that will instantiate it.
> My other question is the whole frontend/controller configuration. In the
> conf file you can (possibly?) specify more frontends. Is this assumption
> correct? Anyway, the "services" menu in poblesec doesn't do anything for
> me by default. By source code modification I was able to get weather
> provider there, but this is of course unacceptable for end user (imagine
> you want to have RSS feeds and weather information there). Is this still
> in process of development, missed I some concept in configuration?
Theoretically it is indeed possible to have several frontends, although
we have a bunch of hacks in the code that assume that there is only one
frontend, which require fixing. In practice however, at this point we
don't have any other frontend than poblesec.
The services menu doesn't do anything at the moment, but we are working
on a plugin management UI, that will be the place for it.
At the moment the weather plugin, although shipped, is not accessible
from the UI but by modifications to the code as you point out, there is
some work in progress to externalize it and allow integration with the
coming plugin management UI. See
https://launchpad.net/elisa-plugin-weather (not usable as is yet).
> I suppose these questions are quite easy to answer, I just wasn't able
> to find solution in the forums/mailing lists. Lot of information
> available still covers version 03.x and isn't very usable for 0.5.x branch.
> Well, sorry for longer post, just wanted to get some things clear (to me:)
No problem, I hope this answers your questions!
>
> Cheers
> Matej
Olivier
