[mythtv-users] 0.22 annoyances

[Michael Jones]

My 2.5 cents worth here..

I would think that the developers would openly WELCOME constructive  
criticism.  Being a developer myself I know that it's not possible for  
me to think of everything.  It is by the "criticism" and suggestions  
coming from the user base that things improve and for everyone.  This  
criticism needs to take the proper form.

This may not be the place for those discussions as I'm sure  
information meant for the developers can be easily missed mixed in  
with all the other information. I can see how they might ignore or  
even resent simple ranting or flaming about a decision made in the  
development process.


On Dec 29, 2009, at 9:21 AM, jedi wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:50:44AM -0500, greg wrote:
>> Ben Woodhouse wrote:
>>> I've been using MythTV since 0.15 and in that time I've seen some
>>> fairly major changes. However, until now, the good has always
>>> outweighed the bad when upgrading to a new version. With 0.22 I
>>> find this is no longer the case.
>>>
>>> Starting with the UI. I realise the UI code has undergone some  
>>> major changes, and I'm sure this resulted in a cleaner code base,  
>>> but it's a shame more care wasn't taken to maintain usability. It  
>>> seems a number of arbitrary decisions have been made with the  
>>> design which break existing functionality.
>>>
>>> List box behavior seems to be completely broken now. List boxes  
>>> inexplicably change focus when you reach the end, so if I'm  
>>> scrolling to the end of a list of articles in mythnews, the focus  
>>> will switch back to the news sources list instead of just stopping  
>>> at the end. Now I have to carefully scroll down, making sure I  
>>> don't go past the last entry, otherwise I'll have to scroll down  
>>> all over again. I don't understand the reasoning for this change.  
>>> If I'd wanted to switch to the left hand list box, I could simply  
>>> press left.
>>>
>>> Probably related to this, if I scroll all the way to the right in  
>>> the browser, the UI will switch focus to some pointless control  
>>> above the browser window. There must be a better way to do this.
>>>
>>> As others have noted (here for example : http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2009-November/270659.html) 
>>> , the right button on the recordings menu no longer works. The  
>>> menu is now inaccessable on my remote. I could reconfigure it, but  
>>> I don't want to use a less accessible button to access one of the  
>>> most commonly used menus, just because I might be using a theme  
>>> which supports horizontal scrolling (I'm not and I don't intend to).
>>>
>>> There's no delete recordings view, which would be fine, except  
>>> there's no way to see how much space there is left, or change the  
>>> sort order (unless that's now in the hidden menu I can no longer  
>>> access)
>>>
>>> Memory use is astronomical on all the themes I've tried  
>>> (mythbuntu, blue abstract, mythcentre wide, graphite), and  
>>> mythfrontend seems to leak memory like a sieve, even when it's  
>>> just idling. I've seen it peak at around 3GB at times. Restarting  
>>> the frontend fixes it temorarily, but it always becomes unusable  
>>> again after a day or so. My 1GB system just isn't sufficient any  
>>> more, as a workaround I'm planning to upgrade to 4GB, but I really  
>>> shouldn't need to do that for an lightweight SD-only media box.
>>>
>>> When skipping forwards/back through a recording, it pauses for a  
>>> long time between skips when the button is held down, so skipping  
>>> forward through a show takes a very long time. This is probably  
>>> caused by the fact that it's playing the video between iterations,  
>>> which didn't happen in 0.21
>>>
>>> In my house at least, 0.22 has been a big step backwards in terms  
>>> of usability. So for the time being, I'm switching back to 0.21  
>>> and holding out to see if any of these issues are fixed in the  
>>> next release. I guess in the meantime I should submit some bug  
>>> reports.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>> Something needs to be said here...
>> It easy to sit back and criticize someone's work. I have been
>> following the progress Mythtv has been making, and there's a lot of
>> work being done by about 10 principle developers...
>> I have been involved in many projects in my life,but have left a few
>> do to this kind of reaction....It's open source...If you don't like
>
> ...what because someone "dared" to criticize?
>
> Some things that might seem like a good idea when discussed in a small
> closed circle of developers might quickly seem less reasonable when
> exposed to a larger set of eyeballs. Criticism should not necessarily
> be casually dismissed. Infact, it probably should be solicited earlier
> in the development cycle.
>
> [deletia]
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users