This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Christoph Haubrich <christoph.haubrich (AT) web.de>
Project's homepage:          http://firefly.vdr-developer.org/skinelchi/
Latest version available at: http://firefly.vdr-developer.org/skinelchi/

See the file COPYING for license information.

This plugin is based on the skinelchi plugin written by _Frank_ @vdr-portal.de


Description:
------------
This plugin for Klaus Schmidinger's Video Disc Recorder VDR adds the "Elchi" skin
to the VDR standard skins.


Requirements:
-------------
VDR >= 1.6.0
It should work with 1.4.7 and most of the 1.5.x versions but this was not completely tested

If EPGSearch is used version 0.9.22 or higher is required because of the 'direct switiching
bug'.

If Avards is used version 0.1.3 or higher is required because earlier version don't have
the required definitions in the header file.

The plugin was developed and tested with full-featured DVB cards. I have no experince with
software decoding (e.g. libxineouput, softdevice) but reports (and maybe patches) are
welcome.

If you would like logos to be display in the channel display, you have to provide them
below the <logodir>/logos and/or <logodir>/hqlogos (see usage below). They must have the
following format:
Normal logos:
      XPM logos, 64x48 pixel, max.  16 colors:   <logodir>/logos

High qualitiy logos:
      XPM logos, 64x48 pixel, max. 240 colors:   <logodir>/hqlogos

HQ-logos can only be displayed if one 8Bit-per-pixel area is used.
For FF DVB cards this requires the 4MB extension or a smaller size of the channel display.


Installation
------------
The skinElchi plugin is compiled and installed the same way as any other plugin:
- cd <VDR>/PLUGINS/src
- tar xjf vdr-skinelchi-<version>.tar.bz2
- ln -s skinelchi-<version> skinelchi
- cd ../..
- make plugins

Copy the directory "symbols" with all its content to the skinElchi plugin directory:
  <configdir>/plugins/skinelchi (e.g. /etc/vdr/plugins/skinelchi)

Copy the two themes in the themes directory to the VDR theme directory:
  <configdir>/themes (e.g. /etc/vdr/themes)
where <configdir> is the actual VDR configdir


Usage:
------
Edit your runvdr (or whatever startup script you use) to load the skinElchi plugin, e.g.
  vdr -Pskinelchi
to use skinElchi with the default settings and start VDR.

The path to the logo directories is supplied via command line parameter:
  -l <logodir>, --logos=<logodir>  directory with logo directory (and optional hqlogo)
                                   (default is <configdir>/plugins/skinelchi)

If skinElchi was compiled with ImageMagick support an additional option is available 
for the EPG images:
  -c <dir>,  --icache=>DIR>         path to EPG images
                                    (default is /video0/epgimages)

Both parameters can no longer be edited in the settings dialog. If a non-default should
be used they must be supplied on the command line.


Important changes compared to previous versions:
------------------------------------------------
- If epgsearch is used it must be version 0.9.22 or higher because of the direct
  switching bug

- The path to EPG images and logos must be commandline parameters now; they can no longer
  be edited in the settings

- The path to the logos must be supplied without the <logos>-subdirectory. This is added by
  skineElchi (as it is done for hqlogos, too)
  So logos will be searched for in the following two directories:
      XPM logos, 64x48 pixel, max.  16 colors:   <logodir>/logos
      XPM logos, 64x48 pixel, max. 240 colors:   <logodir>/hqlogos


Upgrade Procedure:
------------------
- install as usual
- after the first start it is recommended to go to the settings dialog and
  check/change settings to your needs. Leave the dialog with <enter> to save the settings
- the unused entries should be deleted by this procedure


Setup Options:
--------------
The following settings are available in the setup->plugins->skinElchi setup menu:

General:
- use one 8bpp ara (if possible): yes/no

- scroll text:                   yes/no

- timer in menu:                 no: next recording, Timer-Conflict, all

- Show recording details:       EPG or EPG+details

- video format info:          no, aspect ratio, size and aspect ratio

- use graphic progressbar     yes/no

- show symbols                yes/no

- EPG picture size            don't show, 120x90 (epg4vdr), max. 180x144, 120x120 (tvmovie2vdr)

  - duration of each EPG image [s]: 5

  - resize algorithm:           pixel algo, ratio alog, zoom image


Channel Display
- show recording info:        this displays an additional line with the DVB device number 
                              and name and infos about ongoing recurdings
                              you can choose betweeen:
                              never: the additional line is never displayed
                              only if recording: the additional line is displayed only 
                                                 during recordings;   //TODO during?)
                              always: the additional line is always displaye


- show channel logos:         choose if channel logos will be displayed or not

- use one 8bpp are (if possible): //TODO

- use HQ-logos:               if set to yes HQ logos will be searched first

- try to load logo first by: "Channel Name" or "Channel ID"

- display logo messages in syslog: choose yes to write messages about loaded or not found
                              logos in the syslog. This is useful if one is searching which
                              logo should be loaded or to find the channel ID if no logo is found


Tips & Hints:
-------------
Not all colors are available at the same time: some have to be identical to avoid
a color table overflow.
Details will follow



Credits
-------
!! IMPORTANT !!
This history might not be complete as it was not possible to find out all persons who
contributed to the skin. If you feel someone is missing here please contact the author!

- Andy Grobb, Rolf Ahrenberg, Andreas Kool for the original "Elchi" patches for VDR 1.1.x
  http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?threadid=5456

- sezz @vdr-portal.de for the text2skin version of the Elchi skin
  http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?postid=250468#post250468
  http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?postid=246932#post246932

- _Frank_ @vdr-portal.de for the first versions of the skinElchi plugin
  http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?postid=270185#post270185
  http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?postid=429966#post429966

- Andreas Burger for the osdimage plugin where I've lent some code
  http://brougs78.vdr-developer.org/

- Andreas Mair for skinenigmang where I've lent some ideas
  http://andreas.vdr-developer.org/enigmang

- Christian Wieninger for the epsearch plugin where I've lent some ideas
  http://winni.vdr-developer.org/epgsearch/index.html

- Udo Richter (udo_richter @gmx.de) for po2i18n.pl
  http://www.udo-richter.de/vdr/scripts.en.html#po2i18n
