Changing content of skin fields/labels

[Sajuka]

Hi all,

Long time Poweramp user, but just starting to look at creating a skin.  I did some Android development almost 5 years ago, but before I go re-setting up my dev environment I was curious if it's possible for a skin to change the information shown in the various fields on the Now Playing screen?  For example, the KB article says the COMMENT tag can be displayed in the UI, but is there a way to either add a new label to a scene or replace an existing label's content to show it?

Long story short, when dealing with multiple artists rather than showing "Ralph;Bob;Laura" in the artist field of Now Playing, I have a separate tag that is something like "Ralph & Bob, featuring Laura" that I'd rather show.  Previously I've stuffed it into Artist, Album Artist, or Comment, but I'm curious how much latitude I have using the existing extension options...

Thanks!

[andrewilley]

No, skins cannot read information directly from the music database. The only text they can display is either their own fixed wording, or the variable strings passed from the core app.

There is a highly rated Feature Request for the ability use customisable formatting strings for the Title and Artist-Album lines though, which you can add your vote to here:

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@Sajuka have a look at YAPS, I think I have explored the limits of what you can do in a skin but as Andre says, you cannot apply any logic such as string manipulation and if/then statements.

I the end it is all about setting colours, positioning artifacts, swapping out graphics etc.

The most time consuming part I found was to get to know the names for artifacts. When something changes or something new is added by maxmpz, I spend ages trying to find the items.

Sometimes it obvious and over time you get better at it but still a steep learning curve (for me )

[Sajuka]

Thank you gentlemen!

@andrewilley huh, I get a "you do not have permission to see it" box from your link?  Do I need to request access somewhere?

@flyingdutchman nice to know I'm not the only one who gets a little lost in the skin layouts 😅 

Since I can't see to the existing feature request, has anyone proposed adding additional hidden labels in the default skin that 3rd party skins could expose/move around?  Since (AFAICT) PA only reads specific tags, it seems like adding a few more hidden labels would be an "easy"(?) way to make the existing tag data more accessible?  (Reading and displaying more tag values would certainly be nice, but having had that debate with a number media players over the years I know how complicated that can get).

Thanks again!

[andrewilley]

@Sajuka Sorry, I assumed from the content of your post you were an existing member. Voting requires two valid post and two days as a member.

Andre