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, for displaying the HD OSD: VDR >= 1.7.18
It should work with 1.4.7 and most of the 1.5.x versions but this was not tested. If you
want to try it, you need to change the query at the beginning of skinelchi.c accordingly.

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 of course patches if 
neccessary) are welcome.

Beginning with skinElchi 0.2.4 there is support for OSD resolutions higher than SD (720x576),
that is for example 1280x720 and 1920x1080. The symbols and channel logos are loaded from
different sets according to the resolution to avoid too small smybols and logos.

If you would like to show logos of the channels in the channel display, you have to provide them
below the <logodir>/logos and/or <logodir>/hqlogos or set the --logos option accordingly.
skinElchi does not include channel logos but there are floating several sets around the net.

If you have an SD-FF card please notice that HQ-logos can only be displayed if one 
8-Bit-per-pixel area is used. For SD-FF DVB cards this requires the 4MB extension or a 
smaller size of the channel display.

For OSD resolutions higher than SD (720x576) a HD-FF cards or a software device capable 
of displaying the OSD is required.

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 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

If you have some channel logos copy them to the directory below logos corresponding
to the resolution, e.g. /etc/vdr/plugins/skinelchi/logos/576, 
/etc/vdr/plugins/skinelchi/logos/720 and  /etc/vdr/plugins/skinelchi/logo/1080

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 <ResourceDir>/skinelchi/logos)

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 <CacheDir>/skinelchi/epgimages)

Both parameters can only be set on the command line or nedd to be set in 50-skinelchi.conf for
the conf.d mechanism.


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 directories depending on the vertical resolution:
      576 (SD):  64 x  48 pixels, max 240 colors: <logodir>/hqlogos
      576 (SD):  64 x  48 pixels, max  16 colors: <logodir>/logos/576
      720 (HD): 104 x  78 pixels, max 240 colors: <logodir>/logos/720
     1080 (HD): 160 x 120 pixels, max 240 colors: <logodir>/logos/1080
     
All logo files need to be in the XPM format in the expected resolution and directory.
skinElchi will first search logo files with underline instead of blanks and search for logo files with
blanks afterwards. So the logo files can have blanks replaced by underlines for better file handling.
If no logo file for a channel is found then a logo file with the channel ID is searched, e.g.
S19.2E-133-1-342.xpm

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 area (if possible): yes / no

- scroll text:                yes / no

- timer and conflicts in menu: no: next recording / Timer-Conflict / all

- Show recording details:     EPG / EPG+details

- Show EPG details:           EPG / EPG+details

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

- show mail icon              never / only when new mail is avail. / always

- use graphicical 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
                              always: the additional line is always shown


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

- use one 8bpp are (if possible): choose if internally one 8Bit area should be used (requires more OSD memory)

- 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 for finding out which
                              logo is being loaded or to find the channel ID if no logo is found


Tips & Hints:
-------------
For the SD-FF cards not all colors are available at the same time: some have to be identical to avoid
a color table overflow.



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
