[mythtv] CVS Version & Settings Dialogs

Matt Zimmerman mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Fri, 6 Dec 2002 15:30:54 -0500


On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 02:58:35PM -0500, Chris Liscio wrote:

> Yeah.  I just noticed the stub-like nature of the general settings.  :)
> 
> I was thinking that the general settings should either have a wizard-like
> operation mode, or a set of buttons on the top 10% of the screen that let
> you select what the other 90% of the screen contains (xml tv setup,
> directories, etc...).  That way, you use the remote to navigate around the
> buttons (like you can in mythmusic), and then navigate down your list to
> change the other settings.
>
> As it stands right now, the general settings are pretty jam-packed.  :)

The idea behind that dialog was to decide on the appearance of each of the
settings, and see them all in one place for testing.

While a tabbed dialog (which is what I think you are describing) would be
easy to do, I don't think that it is the most appropriate UI for use with a
remote.  I would prefer to use categories and assign them to buttons in the
XML menu, a bit like how it looks now.  The recording profile stuff is a
wizard because it's a potentially large number of settings with a natural
grouping, but that's open to change as well if there are better ideas.  It
would be a matter of about 20 lines of code to make it a tabbed dialog
instead of a wizard, for example.

I see these basic categories:

- Recording (profiles)

- Playback (deinterlacing, over/underscan, forward/rewind amounts, etc.)

- Hardware(?) (capture cards, audio devices, and associated settings like TV
  format and frequency tables)

- Listings (XMLTV)

- Appearance (theme, etc.)

The XMLTV stuff is tricky because while it is big enough to deserve its own
top-level category, it is closely tied to the capture card setup to
associate channel sources.

It's also possible (and not difficult with the current infrastructure) to
present the same settings in multiple UIs.  For example, initial setup of
basic settings could be done through a wizard, and then modifications and
the more esoteric settings would be done through the categorized UI.

-- 
 - mdz