[mythtv-users] How do I customize the mythtv menu?

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Thu Sep 6 21:12:27 UTC 2007


Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 09/06/2007 12:38 AM, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics wrote:
>> I know you can customize the mythtv menus by editing certain xml files, but
>> I just can't seem to find the right file to edit the main menu screen (when
>> settings, appearance, menu theme is DVR).
>>  
>> Any ideas where that file resides?
>>   
> 
> /usr/{,local/}share/mythtv/themes/DVR/mainmenu.xml

Hey, that one's mine, make your own ;-).

$ cd /usr/{,local/}share/mythtv/themes/
$ cp -rp DVR/ MyMenus
$ cd MyMenus
$ $EDITOR mainmenu.xml

MyMenus will then appear as choice for menu theme. If you
come up with an organization that is generally useful for
others, send it in. So far Donovan and I have done the only
ones but I thought there would be several by now.

This is really easy. I didn't like Donovan's default menus
that try to mix the modules in the same sub-menus to give the
impression that everything is tightly integrated. I use myth
as a DVR and don't need to go to a Media Library to decide
if I want to listen to music or watch TV (hint: I'm going to
watch TV and if I intended to listen to music, I'd go to a
music menu =). I wanted to pull the most commonly accessed
pages right to the top. I did this in about an hour or hour
and a half on a Saturday morning and have only needed to tweak
it a couple times since.

Note that the main menu is the only required file. Other files
are referenced in the actions:

      <action>MENU tv_schedule.xml</action>

So you can add more menus, consolidate things and use different
files names if you'd like. One suggestion is that you should
try to limit menus to six items as the themes are expected to
fit six items comfortably. Also, it makes sense to keep the
"<text>" names the same whenever possible so that you can keep
the translations to other languages and so we know what screen
a user is talking about when the send questions. And don't leave
any items out even if you think you will never need them. At
least bury them in a misc sub menu so that all the pages are
potentially accessible.

--  bjm




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