[mythtv] MythMail - early thoughts / ideas

alex at neuon.com alex at neuon.com
Thu Mar 13 07:22:16 EST 2003


Hi,

I am thinking about implementing a new myth module: myth mail. The idea
would be to provide a simple "you have new email" notification and allow
this email to be read (and perhaps replied to, but my personal requirement
is just to be able to read the body text). The ability to send emails from
myth is not really a big requirement for me (plus, it means you really have
to have a keyboard hooked up, and I don't plan on doing that with my mythtv
box). I personally only require POP email support, but I would probably do
IMAP too just to cover the major two bases. 

I don't want it to be a fully blown email client - that's what you have a
PC for. I just figure, that since my mythbox is going to be on most of the
time (and hooked up to the net), it'd be nice to know when I have an email
without having to get up and turn the real PC on.

In thinking about my requirements, I've come to the conclusion, it would be
nice if it were possible to display a simple notification which fades
in/out of the live TV display in much the same way that the current program
info does (e.g. when you change channel). The user can then select whether
to read the email or carry on watching TV.

Detail-wise, let me prefix all of this by saying that:
a) I only installed Myth on Monday,

b) haven't yet read the source anywhere near as much as I'd like and 

c) have no linux background (though I am a C++ software engineer by trade).

As far as I can tell, myth forks other processes for its modules (e.g.
weather, music et al). This presumably limits any interaction with mythtv
itself (since in all of these other modules, live tv is suspended and these
other modules take precedence). 

In a mythmail module, what I really want is a 'watcher' module, i.e.
something which doesn't (generally speaking) have a visible UI. For the
most part it just sits and waits for a mail event. The UI comes to life
when the email is displayed for reading (which can indeed be a normal myth
module.

Now I haven't really thought about this in any detail yet, because I
thought I'd see what the developer chaps though about this. What is
essentially needed is a new type of interface which can interact directly
with the mythtv live display.

Before I dive in and hack out a solution, do any of the lead developers
have any thoughts about how they would see this working? I'm thinking
loadable dll plugins which sit inside the myth MC (?) process. These would
obviously have to be very lightweight and not consume much in the way of
CPU cycles. 

Does anybody have any suggestions to get the ball rolling? I'm loathed to
start hacking and come up with something that works (but won't be accepted
into the tree for whatever reasons), hence the request for any feedback /
ideas.

Welcome your feedback,

Cheers

Alex

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