[mythtv] Documentation

[Nav Jagpal]

I have spent the weekend trying to document a MythTV install from
start to finish.

If you have time, please take a look at
http://silver.cs.uvic.ca/~nav/mythtv/index.html

The document is DocBook XML, so the appearance can be (and should be!)
changed fairly easily by using different style sheets.

Ideally, I would like to put this document somewhere so that other
people can help complete it -- any ideas?  For example, it would be
nice to get installation procedures for other video cards etc.

Oh, and I know I haven't put an "Acknowledgements" section in yet, but I will. 

Two big sources:
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=Debian-MultiCard-Howto
and
http://www.wilson-stowe.com/mythtv/installguide

Thanks in advance.
--
Nav Jagpal

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 09:24:57 -0500 (EST), Daniel Thor Kristjansson
<danielk at mrl.nyu.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005, Nav Jagpal wrote:
> ]Is there a need for any type of documentation, manuals, etc?
> 
> There is a need for developer documentation. Starting with a guide to
> theming and a guide to producing a debug build and a backtrace for bug
> reporting. But we also need an overview of the classes and how they
> interact and something like doxygen for the code itself.
> 
> ]I do not see a TODO list on the site for new-comers, so if  anyone can
> ]throw something my way that a newcomer to the project should be able
> ]to handle, I would greatly appriciate it.
> 
> Wade through http://www.mythtv.org/bugs/
> 
> ]I'm a newcomer to the project, not to the world of coding. However, I
> ]would prefer to work on documentation or light coding projects to
> ]start with.
> 
> That's not a bad idea. People have written architecture overviews and
> there is a Wiki at mythtv.info, some of the information in them could be
> used to improve the official docs. But there is nothing out there that
> tells you how say LiveTV works:
> 
> TVPlay on the frontend requests a recorder from the backend via the
> RemoteRequestNextFreeRecorder function in remoteutil.cpp. It opens a
> socket and sends a "GET_NEXT_FREE_RECORDER" to the master backend. The
> recorder number, hostname and port is used to create a RemoteEncoder
> class. This RemoteEncoder in turn represents a TVRec on a backend with
> which TVPlay communicates. First TVPlay ensures that it is valid and
> working, and then changing its internal state to
> kState_WatchingLiveTV. When TVPlay enters the kState_WatchingLiveTV
> step it tells TVRec to reset its internal state and setup a
> ringbuffer, it then sets up its own ringbuffer on the same file. Once
> this is done it calls SpawnLiveTV() in TVRec, this simply attempts to
> change the TVRec's state to kState_WatchingLiveTV. TVPlay now disables
> the screensaver and attempts to start the NuppelVideoPlayer, and if
> starting the player is successful waits for the recorder to start.
> 
> What TVRec does when it enters WatchingLiveTV could be covered
> separately. As could the NuppelVideoPlayer, which actually plays all
> video files and not just NuppelVideo files.
> 
> I just got this from reading the code just now, but I can see this being
> useful to someone getting started with MythTV. I glossed over some
> details but basically described what goes on.
> 
> -- Daniel
>