KFX-GUI

9volt GUI Karaoke Template Builder

KFX-GUI is a highly extensible graphical karaoke template builder for Advanced Substation Alpha (ASS) subtitles. KFX-GUI does not execute karaoke templates, it only provides a graphical building tool for creating them with automation via plugins.

Contents

• Plugins
  • Effect Component Plugins
    • Creating a Component plugin
    • Component Plugin Format
  • Templater Line Definition Plugins
    • Creating a Line Definition Plugin
    • Line Definition Plugin Format
      • Code line definitions
• Dependencies

Plugins

KFX-GUI uses plugins in a couple different ways. Currently, there are two different plugin types - effect components and templater line definitions. Plugins are used to provide extensibility and both backward and forward compatibility with existing and future templaters and ASS versions.

Effect Component Plugins

The most basic component plugins represent a single ASS tag, such as \pos for setting the position or \border to add an outline. However, the beauty of a plugin system is being able to define pretty much whatever you want, so long as it fits within a few constraints.

Plugins are written in the TOML format, and are automatically loaded from the plugins folder on startup. They should follow a filename convention of pluginname.toml.

Creating a Component plugin

The following example defines a plugin that creates a basic grow-and-rotate syl effect:

name = "Grow-And-Rotate"
author = "9volt"
description = "Expand syl size and rotate it, then return to normal over the syl's duration"
transform = false
params = [
    "Scale", "Rotation"
]
format = "?t($start, $mid, ?fscx${Scale}?fscy${Scale}?frz${Rotation})?t($mid, $end, ?fscx100?fscy100?frz0)"

Component Plugin Format

The component plugin format consists of 3 sections.

1. Plugin identification

   • The first 4 lines of the file describe the name, author, and short description of the plugin. The description is used as a tooltip in the toolbox panel.
   • The 5th line, transform, defines if the plugin may be used within Transform events. For most custom plugins, this is likely to be false, as a transform tag will be provided by the plugin itself.

2. Parameters

   • Here we define a list of parameters the user will supply. Each item in the list will be linked to a text field labeled with the parameter name.
   • In the example, the user will be asked to supply the Scale and Rotation values.

3. Format String

   • The format string defines the output of the plugin.
   • The backslash \ should be replaced with a question mark ? in the format string to avoid any potential issues with escape characters. Question marks in the format string will automatically be replaced with backslashes with the finalized ASS code is generated.
   • Variables follow a format similar to f-strings in Python, ${VariableName}, and are case-sensitive.

Result

Assuming a user suppliad values of 120 for Scale and 15 for Rotation, the following ASS code would be generated when this plugin is executed:

\t($start, $mid, \fscx120\fscy120\frz15)\t($mid, $end, \fscx100\fscy100\frz0)

Templater Line Definition Plugins

The second type of plugin used by KFX-GUI defines the line types used by a templater. This allows KFX-GUI to support an unlimited number of templaters, both present and future, since one can easily write a plugin to support their favorite templater.

Line definition plugins must use the *.linetype.toml file extension.

Creating a Line Definition Plugin

Below is an excerpt from the stock plugin providing support for The0x539's karaoke templater:

target = "The0x539"
components = [
    "code once",
    "code line",
    "template line",
    "template syl",
    "mixin word",
    "mixin char"
]

Line Definition Plugin Format

There are two parts to line definition plugins:

1. target - The target is the name of the templater this plugin supports.
2. components - A list of strings defining the line types used by the templater.

Code line definitions

Code lines are a special part of any karaoke template, and KFX-GUI has some special features for code lines. This section applies to any line with a line type containing the word code.

• A code entry box is displayed on the line settings page
• Components will not be parsed on a code line during ASS generation
  • Similarly, code will not be parsed on non-code lines

Dependencies

KFX-GUI is a Maven project, and specifics on dependency and plugin usage can be found in the pom.xml file in the root directory of this project. TL;DR is that KFX-GUI depends on:

• Java 11
• JavaFX 11
• Night-Config Core, TOML
• Gson