[mythtv] mythtv-commits and clear saved position patch today.

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Tue Aug 5 02:49:37 EDT 2003


Chris Pinkham wrote:
> The patch applied to CVS today concerning clearing of saved bookmark
> positions breaks existing functionality that I know I and several others
> that I have spoken with today use.
> 
> The previous functionality would allow a user to have the "Automatically
> Clear Saved Position" option turned OFF and they could manually clear
> a bookmark by hitting Space or RETURN when watching a video that had a
> bookmark set.  Now, if I have "Automatically Clear Saved Position" turned
> OFF, in order to clear a saved bookmark, I have to rewind all the way back
> to the beginning of a video then hit SPACE/RETURN to set the bookmark
> to the beginning of the video (which still isn't actually clearing
> the bookmark, just setting it real early in the video.
> 
> The change today provides virtually no functionality enhancements unless
> someone's got an itchy trigger finger on the SPACE and accidentilly unsets
> bookmarks.

I checked this in today on the assumption that it wouldn't be
controversial; either you're a Clear Position kind of guy or
or you're not. If I've chosen to opt out of "Clear Saved
Position", I don't want this alternating clear then save
behavior imposed on me.

The functionality it restores is that you no longer need to
press Space twice to clear, then set, a bookmark if you've
specified that you never want your bookmarks deleted. I would
hope that the setting option would express that I don't ever want
to remove a valid bookmark. For reasons I expressed previously
off-line, I need to keep my bookmarks in tact.

I was extremely disappointed when the code was changed to
deliberately destroy my valid bookmarks mercilessly. I simply
don't understand the need to constantly make sure bookmarks
are cleared since the beginning of a show is the easiest position
to find. It is queued positions, especially in key test files,
that I don't want to loose track of. When these changes showed up
shortly before I left town a few weeks ago, I quickly hacked them
out of my own source tree to avoid losing queued positions.

It seems to me that the methodology of clearing a bookmark
during playback may not be the best solution. If I have a
bookmark in a show that I want to watch again from the top,
I can start playback, hit page up a few times, and start
watching. Using "Position Cleared" I would need to start playback,
press SPACE (twice?), ESC, choose "do not save..." from the
exit menu, then start playback again. This just doesn't strike
me the optimal solution.

Maybe a better method would be to have a key or option on the
"i" popup or something before playback that says that you want
to start playback from the beginning. This would allow a viewer
to simply start from the beginning without her having to 
enter->clear->exit->enter. What do you think?

--  bjm




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