[mythtv-theming] New MythTV notification center and theme...

[Jean-Yves Avenard]

Hi there.

A couple of days ago, I added a new feature to MythTV which is the
MythUINotificationCenter component.

the notification center allows for permanent or brief informative
messages to be displayed in the frontend: I call them a notification
card (type is MythScreenType)

The first component making use of the notification center is the
AirPlay server: it will now show when a client is connecting /
disconnecting and display information about the music track being
played: album cover, title, album name, genre, and updated playback
progress.
In the future, I hope to have ready for 0.27 release (only a short
time away), informations about the state of the backend being
displayed when the frontend is idle (recording started, recording
failed etc)

The aim is to display a notification cards stack on the screen with
notification cards being displayed on top of one another.

As a notification can define a duration ; once a notification card
disappear from the screen, the notification card underneath would then
be pushed up taking the place once occupied by the previous
notification card.
Notifications also have a level of priority, so one marked with a
VeryHigh priority level, will be displayed on top of the ones with a
Default priority level etc

The deletion of a notification card from the stack, or addition to the
stack, and the remaining ones being relocated should be animated.

All of this is good; but I know nothing about theming and I can't
really be bothered learning about it (plus the result would suck
anyway).

Due to timing constraints, we have to do with what is currently
available in the existing MythUI widget library
For the time being, I've used the "miniplayer" music player theme to
display the notification cards.

But this theme doesn't cater for the stacking effects of cards.

I would like to know, from you expert themers,  your thoughts on how
to re-use the existing MythUI widgets, if you think it is possible to
implement such animated features and definition for notification
cards.
>From a quick glance, it seems that the only thing allowing to
represent multiple items at once is the ButtonList widget.

My guess is that we would need an animated up, animated down, and the
notification card definition itself with some components being
optionally displayed: image, progressbar, duration.

Ideally, the notification cards stack would be displayed on the right
hand side of the screen; but it could also be made to appear at the
bottom of the screen from right to left (like XBMC is doing with their
RSS feed). That will be left up to the themer.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how to implement it from a
themeable perspective

Otherwise, for this first release, it will be made in a static fashion
using the existing miniplayer.

Thank you
Regards
Jean-Yves