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

Written by Carsten Siebholz (c.siebholz AT t-online.de>
From 0.0.8 on maintained by Andreas 'powARman' Regel (andreas.regel AT powarman.de)
from 0.1.5 on maintained by Wolfgang Astleitner (mrwastl AT users.sourceforge.net) & Andreas 'randy' Weinberger (vdr AT smue.org)

Project's homepage: http://graphlcd.berlios.de/
      before 0.0.8: http://c.siebholz.bei.t-online.de/
GIT repo: http://projects.vdr-developer.org/projects/show/graphlcd

See the file COPYING for license information.


Description:
------------
graphlcd is a plugin for the Video Disc Recorder and shows information
about the current state of VDR on displays supported by the GraphLCD
driver library.


Installation and Configuration:
-------------------------------
1. Install and configure the GraphLCD base package.

2. Unpack the tarball to .../VDR/PLUGINS/src directory

3. Compile the plugin

  make plugins (from VDR's source directory)
 or
  make all (from the plugin's source directory)

4. Copy the 'graphlcd' subdirecory to <VDRconfigDir>/plugins/
   Afterwards, the structure should look like this:

  VDR config directory (eg: /video)
   |
   +- plugins
   |   |
   |   +- graphlcd   (contains logonames.alias)
   |   |   |
   |   |   +-- fonts (contains *.fnt files)
   |   |   |
   .   .   +-- logos (contains *.glcd files)
   .   .

5. If you are using VDR 1.3 or higher, you will have to recreate the
   link to logonames.alias:

  ln -sf logonames.alias.13 logonames.alias

6. Start VDR with the plugin.
   You have to specify your the path and name of the driver library's
   configuration file and the name of your display in the config file
   on the command line.
   Possible options are:
     -c CONFIG,   --config=CONFIG    file name and path of the configuration file
     -d DISPLAY,  --display=DISPLAY  name of the display

   -c: Sets the file path and name of the driver library's config file.
       If this parameter is not given the default '/etc/graphlcd.conf'
       will be used.
   -d: Sets the name of the section in the config file that specifies
       the display used for the plugin's output. If this parameter is
       not given, the first section will be used.

   Examples:
     vdr -P 'graphlcd -c /video/graphlcd.conf -d ks0108'
     vdr -P 'graphlcd -c /etc/graphlcd.conf'


Channel Logos
-------------
To be able to see logos for the channels, you can create a *.glcd file
in the 'logos' directory. This file can be created with the convpic
tool from the GraphLCD base package. The size of the image must be
64x48 (for the *_l.glcd files) or 40x29 (for the *_m.glcd files).
Normally, the plugin looks for a file with the name
<ChannelID>_<Size>.glcd, where <ChannelID> is the ID of the channel
like used by VDR itself and <Size> is a character depending of the
size of the logo. (l for large size logos and m for medium size logos).
To keep an overview over the logos it instead would be better to name
them <ChannelName>_<Size>.glcd and use the file logonames.alias for the
relation between channel ID and channel name.

example: ZDF_l.glcd


Setup Parameters:
-----------------
Plugin active:
  This is something like a 'main switch' for the plugin. If it's set to NO,
  the output to the LCD will be suspended.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Date/Time:
  Enables/disables the date/time bar.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes', 'not in menu')

Show Channel:
  Enables/disables the channel bar.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Logo:
  Enables/disables the channel logo.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'auto', 'medium', 'large')

Show Symbols:
  Enables/disables the symbols for teletext, dolby digital, 2-channel audio,
  encryption and recordings.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes', 'compressed')

Show ET Symbols:
  Enables/disables external triggered symbols.
  graphlcd is able to show some symbols, that can be switched on and off by
  external progams (like vbox). Therefore it reads a file
  (/tmp/graphlcd_symbols). The format of this file is very simple: It might
  have one or more lines. Each line triggers one symbol. The format of each
  line is [ASCII-Char][0|1].
  example:
    V1
    X0
  This example enables the symbol 'V' and disables the symbol 'X'. To get an
  idea, why the symbols are represented by those ASCII-Characters, look into
  sym*.fon and sym*.bmp (in ./tools/crtfont/fonts/ directory): You will see,
  that the symbols are nothing more than a special font and each symbol
  stands for a character.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Program:
  Enables/disables the time, title and subtitle of the current program.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Timebar:
  Enables/disables the timebar (under the start and end time of the current
  program).
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Menu:
  Enables/disables the menu.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Messages:
  Enables/disables displaying messages.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Color Buttons:
  Enables/disables the 4 colered buttons.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Volume:
  Enables/disables the volume bar.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show free cards:
  enables/disables the display of the free cards as empty rectangles with one
  icon for each card.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Identify replay type:
  Based on the replay's name the plugins tries to identify the type of replay,
  e.g. if it is a VDR, DVD or MP3 replay.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Modify replay string:
  Enables/disables replay string modification (Identify replay type has to
  be enabled for this). Based on the replay type graphlcd tries to 'improve'
  the replay name string, e.g. extracts and capitalizes DVD titles.
  (Possible values: 'no', 'yes')

Show Logo on Replay:
  Enables/disables the replay-dependent logo (Identify replay type has to
  be enabled for this).
  (Possible values: 'no', 'auto', 'medium', 'large')

Scroll text lines:
  Enables/disables the scrolling of text lines if they don't fit on screen.
  (used by program information and replay text)
  (Possible values: 'never', 'once', 'always')

Scroll speed:
  Sets the scroll speed in pixels per update.
  (Possible values: 1 <= x <= 10)

Scroll time interval:
  Sets the time between scroller updates in milliseconds.
  (Possible values: 100 <= x <= 2000)


Changing Fonts:
---------------
It's very easy to change the fonts that are used by graphlcd.
The plugin uses 4 fonts:
- a large font, that is used for
        the title of the current program and for
        the title of the recording (during replay).
- a normal font, that is used for
        the date/time bar,
        the channel bar,
        the starttime, endtime and the subtitle of the current program,
        the times in the replay screen,
        the title and the items in the menus,
        the popup-messages and for
        the text items like the content of a recording.
- a small font, that is only used for the text of the 4 colored buttons.
- a symbol font, that contains the symbols.

Because smaller displays should use smaller fonts, the displays will be
classified in 3 categories. Each category should have all 4 fonts.
The name of the font files depend on the category and on the font:
  small displays  ( vertical size < 64 ):
    f_s_l.fnt  : large font
    f_s_n.fnt  : normal font
    f_s_s.fnt  : small font
    f_s_sym.fnt: symbols
  medium displays ( vertical size 64..127 ):
    f_m_l.fnt  : large font
    f_m_n.fnt  : normal font
    f_m_s.fnt  : small font
    f_m_sym.fnt: symbols
  large displays  ( vertical size >= 128 ):
    f_l_l.fnt  : large font
    f_l_n.fnt  : normal font
    f_l_s.fnt  : small font
    f_l_sym.fnt: symbols

To change the fonts you only have to change the related symbolic link to
another font file.
If you use another already existing font or if you want to create a new
one by yourself does not matter. If you want to create a new one or if
you want to modify an existing font, look into /tools/crtfont in the
GraphLCD base package and read the README.