[mythtv] Regression in Previously Recorded

David Engel david at istwok.net
Tue Nov 14 23:10:36 UTC 2017


On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 04:10:23PM -0500, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 11/14/2017 03:08 PM, David Engel wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 02:12:50PM -0500, Peter Bennett wrote:
> > > Somebody had said the most common actions need to be on Enter/Select and the
> > > others on M(menu).
> > That was me who said that.  I don't know if it's officially
> > docuemented anywhere, but here's the guidelines I try to follow.
> > Pressing SELECT should bring up a menu with the most common actions
> > (limited to about 3 to 5) relevent to the currently highlighted
> > "thing" (*).  Pressing MENU should bring up a menu with additional,
> > less common actions and other actions that affect other things about
> > the screen (like sorting, etc.) (**).  Pressing other keys like INFO,
> > PLAY, EDIT and DELETE should act as shortcuts to choosing one of the
> > options on either of the menus.
> 
> Yeah, originally MENU was meant to bring up a menu that listed actions that
> apply to the screen or the section of MythTV currently in use (and may
> include actions that apply to the currently-selected item), and SELECT was
> meant to bring up the "shortcut" or "context" menu for actions that apply to
> the currently-selected individual item.  Generally MENU brought up a
> more-complete menu and SELECT brought up the most-commonly used or
> most-likely-to-be-desired actions.
> 
> > (*) Note that there are exceptions to this.  One very notable one is
> > the Watch Recordings screen where pressing SELECT starts playing.
> > Personally, I'd like to fix that and do away with the whole,
> > unintuitive, "double menu" thing on that screen.
> 
> And this exception is where it was changed when users complained that "Any
> sane user interface doesn't need 2 different buttons for menus."  I'm not
> sure if the people who complained were using the Apple 5-button remote and
> really couldn't spare a button or if they just hadn't recognized the reason.
> So, the 2 menus--the context menu (SELECT menu) and the main menu (MENU
> menu) were combined into one that flip-flops when you hit MENU again.  It's
> also even more annoying that which one displays initially differs depending
> on which column your selection is in when you hit MENU, so it makes it
> really awkward to explain how to do something in that screen ("Hit the MENU
> key, once or twice, until you see 'Playlist Options,' and then select
> 'Playlist Options'..." instead of just saying, "Hit the MENU key, then
> select Playlist Options, then..." or "Hit MENU|Playlist Options...").

Yes, the flop-flopping menu is what I was referring to by "dobule
menu".  Flip-flopping is much more accurate, pejorative name.
Although, even my Mom eventually figured it out.

> > (**) It's also been suggested that we should have something like
> > ITEMMENU and SCREENMENU actions for each screen.
> 
> Which, funny enough is what SELECT and MENU were, respectively. :) And now
> that it was changed in Watch Recordings, but not elsewhere (such as Watch
> Videos), usability of MythTV is even worse than it was before--I'm
> constantly pressing the wrong button because I watch things about equally in
> recordings and videos, and they're different, so I can't train my
> brain/fingers to do the right thing since the approach for the same action
> is different in the 2 places.

Now try switching to a new remote where the MENU and EXIT/BACK buttons
have been swapped!  I did that recently and still have to stop
sometimes and really think about which button I mean to press. :(

David
-- 
David Engel
david at istwok.net


More information about the mythtv-dev mailing list