[mythtv-users] Merge of OSD and Main themes causes WAF to Plummet

Manuel McLure manuel at mclure.org
Sun Feb 27 22:32:31 UTC 2011


On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 2:23 AM, Justin Hornsby
<justin0hornsby at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I can't help wondering in all this is that the OSD designed to
> complement a UI theme would use an identical style to the same sort of
> area in the UI - e.g. the description area of the OSD would be similar
> to the description area in 'watch recordings'.  That's what I call
> consistency.

The problem as I see it is that there appears to be a philosophy of
"make the theme consistent" even though in many cases consistency
negatively affects usability. The main theme of MythTV (where the
theme occupies the whole screen) and the OSD theme (where the OSD
overlays the video) are different use cases. In the case of the main
theme, eye candy does not affect usability a lot, so the theme
designer can go hog-wild. In the case of an OSD theme, eye candy is
much more of a negative.  I want my OSD to be as unobtrusive and
simple as possible (hence my use of BlackCurve) while I prefer my main
theme to be a lot flashier.

I'm sometimes reminded of the saying "a foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds." Consistency is good, but just as important
is recognizing that sometimes consistency is not required and is in
fact counterproductive.
-- 
Manuel A. McLure WW1FA <manuel at mclure.org> <http://www.mclure.org>
...for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law,
no man may kill a cat.                       -- H.P. Lovecraft


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