SheetMaker for Linux

[bunyip1]

[mad_ady]

Yikes, my bad... I remember the "boogie man" reference, but I still read it "BunnyIP" in my head, sorry...

[mad_ady]

@bunyip1: I'd like to ask you for your advice. I want to make a script to generate an image (periodically) containing some elements at various offsets. Very much like a moviesheet based on an xml (or some other datatype) template, but the data is arbitrary - (eg. weather, current time, current playing song, etc).
I know your engine already does this, but:
1. Have you encountered/can you recommend a piece of software that already does what I need?
2. If I were to reuse your work, could I:
2.1 Run non-interactivelly and
2.2 Use different tags than moviesheets, but the same general structure
2.3 Feed my data in instead of what got scraped from imdb/etc
2.4 Generate an image of arbitrary dimensions?

If #2 is a viable option can you point me to the relevant blocks of code (I'm fluent in perl)?
Thanks.

PS. Is it possible to use relative positioning in the template? I need to accomodate several resolutions (480x360, 1024x600, 1024x768, 1080p). But I guess one template won't look good...

[bunyip1]

[mad_ady]

Sounds great! I'd like to play with it (although I'm not sure I'll have time till february, so if you're reworking stuff I can wait).

Regarding the xml structure - is there any formal definition? Did it originate from wdtv's format or is it closer to imagemagik? Also, can you recommend a template editor/previewer?

[bunyip1]

You have given me something to think about, I'm intrigued by the thought of making a generic version of SMK_Magick.pm. I'm going to do some toying myself.

You can pick up a unaltered version => if you want to have a look yourself.

You may recall that SheetMaker was born out of need for Linux users to have a tool for their WDTV devices like the popular 'ThumbGen' for windows which had already set data and template standards. So SML was designed to be able to use this data (TGMD files) and existing available templates. So the template documentation came from ThumbGen and he also created a windows-based template editor. You should try and track down his docs and software (they are now open-source).

I'll let you know when I have a 'generic' version of SMK_Magick.pm available, but feel free to experiment on the current one.

Cheers,
bunyip.

(Edited: Spelling)

[mad_ady]

I've looked over your code and looks "generic" enough. I don't think you need to modify it much. I was worried that the actual tags (director, plot, synopsis) were somehow hardcoded in the generation process.

I see that the constructor process takes a template or a type (which is not used) and a data reference. Care to share what the data structures you're passing are? I'm not really sure how one passes the actual values. Or are they merged with the template before passing (e.g. the template has the internal variables already replaced)?

Also, I could probably use Common::SMK_Common, since it's referenced.

Thanks!

[bunyip1]

Hi mad_ady,

You can delete the following - they are SMK specific..
use Common::SMK_Common; - (Only needed to link back to the data substitution routines that you wont need).
my $type = shift; - (no longer used and will be dropped in the new version).
remove the whole subroutines "BuildThumbnail" and "GetTrickleCovers".
remove all lines containing reference to 'SMK_Window_GTK' or 'SMK_Common' - (Data substitution again)
You can drop out the section that deals with displaying 'RATINGSTARS'.

One new feature in Version 2 will be the option to generate a sheet using only a Background image and not apply a template (similar to the generation of a Cover). So the '$data' input is optional and is used to specify the path to the 'Background' image.

The SMK method is to build the whole image is one call - all instructions being in the template, so if you want to do this then your script would create it's own run-time template and pass it to the SMK_Magick package.

But if you want to build up an image step by step from your own script you will want to do separate calls for each text or image element you want to add to base image. For this you will need to pass the working image back to SMK_Magick each time you want to add something (similar to the $data input variable mentioned previously).

HOWEVER to make things simpler I have created a modified version of SMK_Magick.pm (with the above changes) to be more generic, and included a test script to illustrate how you might use it.
Get these examples => .

[mad_ady]

Thank you for your help.
But your link was wrong. This is the correct link (for posterity): http://bunyipawonga.org/files/imagetest.zip

Your example works correctly. It will be a good base to start off. I'll show off the results once I'm done. The plan is to display date/weather/alarm information on this display: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products ... 7435282441

[bunyip1]

Yeah I fixed the link - too many http:// leaders.
Sounds good - you could probably cull the bits you dont use out of the final product too.

Cheers,
bunyip.