[mythtv] New UI code. (was: blah blah up/down arrows blah blah)

[Isaac Richards]

On Friday 07 April 2006 14:17, Steven Adeff wrote:
> Sound good, have you looked at  XBMC's theme structure? It looks
> fairly flexible and simple from my time with it.

The existing code we have is flexible - it's just not simple.  I'm basically 
retaining the flexibility (and adding more), but significantly simplifying 
things.  Got a good chunk if it already completed.  It's still relatively 
similar in style to the existing themes - I don't want to change things too 
extensively.

> I had an I idea while using XBMC the other day. It has an area of the
> main menu that when playing music is a window to the visualization. I
> thought it would be neat if Myth had the ability to enter the menu
> structure while watching tv in a similar fashion, where the tv video
> is placed in a window like with the EPG, but instead of the EPG have
> the menu structure overlayed. This area could also be used in similar
> fashion as to XBMC for the music visualization, etc.

Eh, I dunno.  Could be done with the GL stuff, I suppose.

> > > Will we finally be able to play music and view a slide show at the same
> > > time? =D
> >
> > That's completely separate. =)  I still maintain that it wouldn't be very
> > hard to background the existing music player and return to it if someone
> > wanted to do the work.  It's just not something I want to spend time on.
>
> Hrm, from my understanding through what I've read, I thought the
> plugins exited when you left them, wouldn't that make controlling the
> music while its being played impossible if you exited MythMusic? While
> I'm not so interested in playing music during a slide show, it would
> be nice to be able to do other tasks such as schedule shows, see what
> I've recorded, etc,  while MythMusic was playing in the background,
> and still being able to select the next track, etc.. I just got the
> impression that this was not possible due to the plugin structure?

Not at all.

The plugin api is 5 C functions: run, config, init, type, destroy.  'type' is 
unused.  A plugin will also generally registering some jump point 
destinations.

There's absolutely nothing that is making a plugin exit when you leave it.  
Right now, every plugin does a complete setup/teardown when it's told to 
run - but it certainly doesn't have to do that.  Wouldn't be difficult at all 
to simply not tear everything down when exiting the screen and return to that 
state when coming back - the _only_ tricky part is requesting it to stop 
playing if you go into something that wants the sound device.

Isaac