[mxlance]

I have been dabbling with modding skins for the past few years. I have no coding background at all. What I have learned so far is do to the generosity and patience of the “Skilled Skinner “ here who have kindly offered their guidance from time to time.

I am reluctant to ask any given Skinner for help, as they are not teachers, and they clearly spend many hours at their craft. If a Skinner does choose to offer advice and guidance I am very grateful.
I have really enjoyed making simple changes to a skin. I wish I had discovered this when I was much younger. However I realize now I do not have the talent, skill, time or aptitude to learn the coding/skinning needed to design and build my own skin. I am doing my best on my own but I have reached the limit of my abilities. I am happy with just Modding a skin. And I believe with a bit more help I could do better.
I believe I am not alone in this.

With this in mind I have a suggestion:
Start a dedicated Modding thread within the Skinning thread.
This would be the place for beginners and the talent-less to ask for help. Without driving the Skinner crazy.

A few questions that I might ask.

1. What would you recommend for coding software? Does one offer any advantage over an other for skinning/xml? (I used Sublime Text and now I am trying out Visual Studio Code)

2. How do you find the thing you want to change in the code?
(Example: Change the label of a home page widget in a given skin.)
I get that the location is skin specific but how would a Skinner go about finding something in a skin that is not theirs? Right now I spend hours trying to trace it back from the home.xml but often get nowhere. Is there a better way?

3. I tried to get the KodiDevKit working in sublime text but gave up. Would it help me find things?

Thank you

[the_other_guy]

i have tried to set this up but no one else seem to want to get involved https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=350044

A few questions that I might ask.

1. What would you recommend for coding software? Does one offer any advantage over an other for skinning/xml? (I used Sublime Text and now I am trying out Visual Studio Code)
Notepad++ with xml plugin 

2. How do you find the thing you want to change in the code?
(Example: Change the label of a home page widget in a given skin.)
I get that the location is skin specific but how would a Skinner go about finding something in a skin that is not theirs? Right now I spend hours trying to trace it back from the home.xml but often get nowhere. Is there a better way?
Notepad++ search files




3. I tried to get the KodiDevKit working in sublime text but gave up. Would it help me find things?  
https://kodi.wiki/view/InfoLabels
https://kodi.wiki/view/Skinning_Manual

[mxlance]

@the_other_guy 
Thank you for the reply and info.

Thank you for this link “350044 (thread)”
This is great, I plan to read through it right a way.
It is not the skin I use but may have info that I can make use of and apply.

1. Notepad++ is not available for Linux but thanks. I have installed xml addons to both Sublime Text and VSC.

2. Searching only works if you first know what you are searching for and what it may be called.
I use the search in folder and in file all the time.

3. The Skinning Manual is something I use daily.
I will look at InfoLables again.

Thank You for taking the time to reply.