Help with adding a custom GUI with PNS

[deadriff]

I'm a total newbie to PNS let alone plugin creation in general and need some help adding a custom skin. I've tried referencing the manual (probably missing something) and the skins used with the factory presets. When the file's saved as .kuiml, it's grayed out in the file browser so I can't load it in PNS. If it's saved as .xml, I can load it but get a string of error messages such as

there were errors while loading filename.xml:
- error: invalid file: root element must be 'SKIN'

The factory skins don't seem to start with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> as suggested by the manual, maybe due to using the global skin, but instead just start at <SKIN> and I've tried doing both with no luck

I've tried saving the file in documents/BCA/BCA's PNS/Skins as well as in the PNS app data/Skins (I'm on mac) which doesn't seem to make a difference

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Edit: I tried moving the skin file to the same directory as the actual plugin code and now PNS loads the script but shows no controls. If I move the skin back into the skins folder, the plugin loads like it did before with the global skin. I take it that means it loaded the skin but the skin isn't working?

Edit 2: I think I was mistaken, looks like it had loaded the default script which is why it showed no controls. However, when loading my script it did attempt to load the skin, but gave me a similar error:
There were errors while loading innerKUIML:
- error: Invalid file: root element must be 'SKIN'

[Blue Cat Audio]

Hi,

the xml thing may indeed be ignored, although it is recommended to have it. Does you skin have the exact same name as the DSP script? Also can you maybe share the skin code?

[deadriff]

Thanks for the reply! Through some digging, I think the issue was that I was using TextEdit and it was saving in a rich text format. I tried using VSCode and it loaded the skin, albeit with no layout showing, but at least it loaded

[Blue Cat Audio]

Oh yes it has to be a standard text file indeed.