[mythtv] [PATCH] Playlist feature UI tweaking

Chris Pinkham cpinkham at bc2va.org
Sun Jan 23 13:49:43 EST 2005


> This patch modifies the UI of the new playlist functions in Watch 
> Recordings:
> 
> 1.  Removes the "alternative" INFO pop-up that occured when a playlist 
> had items.  I didn't feel that changing the entire UI path when 
> playlists exist was a good idea.
> 
> 2.  Adds label with playlist count (if exists) and button for Add to 
> Playlist to standard INFO menu.  Add turns to Remove if items is already 
> in the playlist.
> 
> 3.  Adds "Clear playlist" button to MENU popup accessible from anywhere 
> in the screen to dump the current playlist if a playlist is present.
> 
> 4.  Moved "Shuffle play" and "Play from playlist" to "Play from..." when 
> playlist is present.

Thanks for looking at this.  I've had something like it in my tree for
a while and figured others could benefit from it also but also knew it
could use some tweaking to make it more user-friendly.

I haven't applied this, but I have a few questions/comments after looking
at the patch.

The reason I did a 'alternate' INFO popup was that some things don't
apply to a playlist.  I wanted to make it clear that when you start
defining a playlist, the actions available were only for the playlist,
not for the individual item you were currently on.  Do you think it
is clear enough the way it is in your patch?  I wonder about users
thinking "Hey, I hit INFO on a single recording and the popup menu
was for that recording, but when I changed the recording group, it
changed the group for the whole playlist.  The same goes for Delete.
Rather than adding new menu items for things like Delete and Change
Recording Group, these items/functions operate on the playlist if you
have one defined or on a single recording if you don't have a playlist
defined.  That's part of the functionality that the alternate popup
was trying to give, to provide a clear distinction that the actions
on that popup are for the playlist as a whole.

On the "Play from playlist randomly" popup, you call doPlay() when I
think it should be doPlayListRandom();

Maybe a better layout would be something like this:

MENU popup
  - Playlist Actions (calls sub-popup)
	- Play
	- Play Random
	- Delete All Items
	- Change Recording Group
	- Clear
	- Add title/category/recgroup/etc.
	(And eventually maybe)
	- Save
	- Load
	- Edit

INFO popup
	- Add to Playlist
	- Remove from Playlist

The "Add title/category/recgroup/etc." would add all items in the
current right hand box.  The text could/would change depending on
what the current view was.  This would take advantage of
your recent "Toggle recording group view in Watch Recordings"
patch.

If this was the layout, then the Delete, Change Recording
Group, and Play methods would have to know whether they were supposed
to be playing a playlist or not.  They could be broken up into
separate methods instead of having the "if (playlist.count())
blah else blah;" statements they have in them now.
This layout would also provide a clear distinction between what
actions were performed on the playlist as a whole and what actions
could be performed on the individual recording currently selected.

Thoughts?
-- 

Chris



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