[mythtv] Improve MythTV usability

Xavier Hervy xavier.hervy at bluebottle.com
Wed Jan 23 16:46:42 UTC 2008


On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 17:40 +0000, Xavier Hervy wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 11:39 +1100, Nigel Pearson wrote: 
> > ....
> > > If the user want to use a touch screen (mythrecipe in the
> > > kitchen for example), he will need a back button in the menu or the  
> > > Info
> > > button, that should be theme independent (I should admit, I don't know
> > > how it can be possible).
> > 
> > or a "gesture" which is mapped to those actions.
> Did myth support gesture ? 
> > 
> > 
> > ....
> > >  Some screen have an help menu, it may be time to spread this  
> > > feature to
> > > each screen/menu. the Help could describe the purpose of the screen,
> > > describe the icons if needed (dependant of the theme) and display what
> > > action can be performed with what key, according to the user settings.
> > > May be those help menus can be standardised and self generated.
> > 
> > Agree with all that,
> > but "screen purpose" and icons are
> > extra documentation that someone
> > needs to add somewhere, and maintain.
> Agree with the extra documentation but at least the key binding and icon
> description give a lot of help already... 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > The keybindings table contains almost enough information
> > for a context-sensitive, self generated, key help popup:
> > 
> > context      action  description           keylist
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > TV Frontend  DELETE  Delete Program              D
> > Music        DELETE  Delete track from playlist  D
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > Something like
> > MythMainWindow::ShowKeyHelp(const QString &context)
> > could:
> > 
> > 
> > 1) Get a list of all the relevant keys for context
> > 
> > 2) Prune that list down to just the non-Global ones
> > (we don't really need to know every number key)
> or global key can be display at the end of the list 
> > 
> > 3) Translate the descriptions to the users' language
> I guess I can do my bit... 
> > 
> > 4) Maybe group related keys together,
> > and prioritize (show oft used ones first)
> I can log the user interaction in order to do that ... 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Eagerly awaiting someone to produce a patch for this :-)
> The function ShowKeyHelp is quite easy to do then (1 and 2 only). It
> doesn't address all the usability issues but it's a step in the good
> direction.
> I will try to implement this as soon as possible.
> 

I had a look to the code yesterday, It is not as simple as I would
expected :(
If I take the "TV Frontend" as an example, there is quite a lot of
keybinding, however only some of them are in use in the different menus.
That's probably what you mean by "group related keys" ?
It means, that for each dialog, i need to check the ProcessKeypress
method to see what key is in used, and build the help menu in function
of this.
a quick grep give me 185 references of the ProcessKeypress method, quite
a lot of work then :(.

Is there any plan to make myth action based, use QAction or some thing
equivalent ?
It would be helpful to create dynamic menu, dynamic help ...
Xavier

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