[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] mythtv/master commit: 0e84bfed2 by Michael T. Dean (sphery)

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/18/2011 05:24 AM, Paul Harrison wrote:
> On 18/09/11 05:39, George Nassas wrote:
>> Cool. And thank you.
>>
>> As a general comment perhaps the project has room for improvement
>> around communication and consultation? I'm not sure what form that
>> might take. I've watched more than a few on-list discussions turn into
>> windy free-for-alls that go nowhere and that's no good. On the other
>> hand secret off-list discussions and like it or lump it rollouts can
>> sometimes rankle even though I like the vast majority of what gets
>> rolled out. Just sayin'
>>
>> Like Eric and everyone else I'm glad that folks give up some of their
>> time to evolve myth, no sane person comes here making demands or
>> giving ultimatums or whatever.
> Heh I don't think there's any chance of that I've been a MythTV
> developer for 6 years and wasn't consulted either :( As far as I know it
> was a unilateral decision by Mike to change this and my feeling is it's
> more to do with removing a setting than the actual functionality it removes.
>
> My preference would be to just restore the left/right actions in the OSD
> menus so you can navigate the menus like Mark K intended them to be. If
> it could be done so it works the same in all the menus then all the better.
>

No, if all I wanted to do was remove the setting, I'd have just removed 
the setting and made it always on (which, IMHO, is the way it should 
have been, as there's no reason for the setting--we should either 
support it or not support it).

I truly--as I said--wanted to fix the lack of consistency.

Since it seems everyone would prefer that I justify the decision--which 
was discussed at length both on IRC /and/ in these lists over the years 
and other developers actually agreed that consistency was more important 
than keeping a broken, partial implementation (though I'll let you all 
find the references yourself because I've already spent way more of my 
time justifying this change than it's worth, so don't want to go dig 
them up myself, and I don't want to throw other people who were involved 
in the discussions to the wolves and have everyone picking apart every 
word they said)--here's a little sampling of the problems with the 
partial implementation we had:

a) In 0.22, we lost the ability to hit RIGHT on a recording in Watch 
Recordings to bring up the action popup (with Play, Play from..., ... 
options).  At this point everyone complained, and since it wasn't me who 
made the change, other people got called names.
b) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, you can use LEFT/RIGHT to navigate in the main 
menu, but only if it's a vertically-arranged theme.  If you use Terra, 
for example. LEFT/RIGHT doesn't do BACK/SELECT--and, more importantly, 
UP/DOWN doesn't do BACK/SELECT.
c) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, you can use LEFT/RIGHT within any mythui dialog 
box (MythDialogBox), but only if it's arranged vertically and, more 
importantly, only with certain types of items.  (MythUIButtonListItems 
only?  Definitely not MythUICheckBox.  Definitely not 
GroupSelector--which actually /looks/ identical to a MythUIListItem, 
making it really hard to tell that it doesn't work.)  For example, in 
Watch Recordings, you can bring up the MENU, then use RIGHT to select 
Change Group View and Change Group Filter, then navigate through the 
group list with UP/DOWN or PAGEUP/PAGEDOWN, and when you find the 
group/filter you want, you /cannot/ select it with RIGHT--you /must/ use 
SELECT.
d) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in the schedule editor, you can highlight, 
"Schedule Options" or "Storage Options" or whatever and if you hit 
RIGHT/LEFT, it goes to the next item in the list--in Arclight and 
MythCenter, at least, that means that when I hit RIGHT to select the 
item, it moves to the item underneath the one I've highlighted.
e) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in the program list (such as the Upcoming 
Recordings screen), I can't hit RIGHT to select an item.  In MythCenter, 
LEFT/RIGHT do nothing.  In Arclight, hitting RIGHT on an upcoming 
recording go back to the list of days (filter?) on the left.
f) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in the program finder, I can select a title on 
the left, and hit RIGHT and it shows the list of items with that title.  
Then, if I want to schedule a recording, I can't hit RIGHT, again, 
because doing so moves me to the "First Letter" box--which is way over 
on the left in MythCenter and up and to the left in Arclight.  Instead, 
I have to hit SELECT to bring up the schedule editor.
g) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in programrecpriority (Set Priorities and 
Recording Rules), hitting LEFT/RIGHT decrements or increments the 
priority of the recording rule rather than selecting an item.
h) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in the Program Details screen, I can't use LEFT 
to dismiss the dialog/get back to the list of recordings or the EPG.  I 
can't use RIGHT to move to the next page of the details.
i) In 0.24-fixes MythTV, in the New Titles screen, when you bring up the 
"Choose Search Phrase" dialog, selecting RIGHT on, for example, Movies 
doesn't select Movies (like SELECT does), but moves you down to the 
Cancel button, then you have to hit RIGHT, again, to get to OK, then hit 
SELECT.
j) Many, many more inconsistencies throughout the UI that I don't have 
time to list.

0.24-fixes MythTV was used for the examples, above, because its behavior 
is the same as master's behavior before this commit.

The problem with the OSD menu is that it's not an OSD menu.  It's a 
MythDialogBox.  The reason it worked the way it did was because 
MythDialogBox worked the way it did.  It now works exactly like the 
dialog boxes work in Watch Recordings.  For example, in Watch 
Recordings, select a recording and hit MENU to bring up the menu.  Then 
select Storage Options or Recording Options or Job Options to get a sub 
menu, then hit ESCAPE or BACK and the entire menu/sub-menu is 
dismissed.  And, as a matter of fact, even in 0.24-fixes in those 
sub-menus, when you hit LEFT (with arrow-key acceleration), it dismisses 
the sub-menu and the menu.

And, as Stuart said, we're working on ideas to make it better than it 
was.  When it returns, it will be better than the 10% solution we had.  
Obviously leaving it in place wasn't encouraging anyone to actually do 
it right, so maybe this will.

Nah, really, you caught me.  It was just about the setting.  I removed a 
completely useless setting (because we should either support arrow-key 
acceleration or not support it--so there's no reason to make it a 
setting), but rather than stop there, just for good measure I also 
removed a feature that I liked--at least a feature I liked it when/where 
it worked.

Of course, I'm probably just lying about all this, too.  After all, 
that's what I do, I suppose.

Mike