Monday, September 10, 2007

Registry display plugin

This plugin displays a string stored in registry.

The path is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RegDispPlugin
Value name: DisplayString

It checks if this string has changed several times per second when today screen is shown (as the system sends refresh message to all plugins) and displays the updated message if a change occurred.

What is it good for?
First, if you write apps using mortscript or similar like the user who requested this it will let your script display stuff on today screen.
Alternatively it could be used to mark your device today with a string that isn't as easily changed as user info.

The source is basically a skeleton plugin you can use to build your own plugin on (no license / copyright to limit you) and it already has several tricks needed for the plugin to display correctly:

* VGA compatibility
* Text size matching system settings
* Proper header in settings dialog (like on system plugins)
* Proper text color when selected (according to theme)
* No blinking all today screen on change
* Proper resize when switching between landscape and portrait

When I was writing my first plugin I could not find all these little fixes concentrated in a single article so I had to fish for each one as the bug reports came in.

Hope you will find this little project useful.


levenum of xda-developers

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