[mythtvnz] How to customise themes

[Austin Green]

Hi Stephen,

On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 14:17:15 +1300
Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:

> Where are you modifying the theme?  In Ubuntu, the themes are stored
> in /usr/share/mythtv/themes.  But that is not where you modify them,
> ...  To modify a theme, copy its directory to
> /home/<frontend user>/.mythtv/themes

Sorry, I didn't explain very well; I had already done that copy, including all the 'default' directories, to my .mythtv/themes.

> ...  If there is a file in the default directory you want to
> modify, first check if the setting is not already in a file in your
> new theme directory.  If so, the one in the theme directory overrides
> the one in the default directory.  If the setting is not anywhere in
> your new theme directory but only in the default directory, you will
> need to copy that setting (or the entire file?) to your new theme
> directory and edit it there.  I have never actually done that, so I am
> not sure if you need to copy the file or just the one setting.

Thanks, that was the step I was missing!  Copied the mainmenu.xml to my new theme directory in .mythtv, modified it there, and MythTV started taking notice of the changes.

> I suspect that your problem with changes in the menu-ui.xml file will
> just have been that it was still using its cached version.  I think
> the cached themes are stored here:
> /home/<frontend user>/.mythtv/cache/themecache/

I tried deleting the cache but it seemed to have no effect.

> Theme data is cached by mythfrontend, so I think you need to exit and
> restart mythfrontend to load new changes.  Or switch to another theme
> then switch back to your new theme.

Some experimentation showed that all you need to do is go to the theme-chooser menu, where the current theme will already be highlighted, and just hit OK (or Enter)

And after more web searching I finally found this:
	https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythUI_Theme_Development
which looks as if it should have all the details on how to mess with themes.

Cheers,
Austin.