MediaPortal Wiki 
MP-II Skin Engine
Introduction
This page describes the SkinEngine, the MP-II module which renders and displays the GUI content for MediaPortal-II. To get a more general overview over the MediaPortal-II architecture, please start at the developers system documentation.
Delimitation
The SkinEngine is the module which displays the GUI content to the user. It also handles user input like mouse, keyboard and remote control input. Depending on the screen setting, the SkinEngine displays a Window on the screen or occupies the whole screen. The layout information to be displayed comes from skin files, every screen to be displayed has its own skin file. The skin files are written in the Microsoft XAML language, which is a general GUI definition language. During the MediaPortal-II runtime, the SkinEngine communicates with the user via mouse, keyboard and remote control, at the other hand it communicates with underlaying MediaPortal worker instances, so called "models". Every skin file has the option to "talk" to one or more model instances, which normally come from loaded plugins.
The SkinEngine parses skin files written in the XAML language, but it doesn't use WPF. It has its own control's library, called MediaPortal Presentation Foundation (MPF). Those controls are widely general, but in some aspects they are special to MediaPortal.
Architectural overview
This section will describe the basic architecture of the SkinEngine
XAML parser (to be added)
GUI Controls (to be added)
Controller part (to be added)
Overview over the XAML language
This section gives a general overview over the XAML language and shows links to public resources. (to be added)
MediaPortal XAML more in detail
This section describes the differences of the MP-II XAML to the MS XAML and WPF. (to be added)
MPF - The control's library of MediaPortal-II
Describes the controls available in MP-II. (to be added)