[mythtv] Viewing Time Monitor

Chad Vogelsong cvogelsong at intellimation.cc
Mon Oct 6 11:13:29 EDT 2003


For building your GUI, you can use BASH shell scripts to create basic &
advanced GUI displays.  There is also pyGTK & Glade.  There is a good
beginner article here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6586

Also, if you can find issue #113 of Linux Journal (magazine), there is a
good article called:

"Scripting for X Productivity  by Marco Fioretti
Save your carpal tunnels--automate GUI actions for productivity and
application testing."

For simple GUI applications, I find it hard to beat using a shell
script.  If you can't find the magazine available, wait a little bit and
the article should appear online pretty soon.

Chad



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brett [mailto:tamntm2 at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 11:41 PM
> To: mythtv-dev at mythtv.org
> Subject: [mythtv] Viewing Time Monitor
> 
> 
> I've written a bit of code that keeps track of how
> much time I spend watching MythTV.  (I should write
> one that keeps track of how much time working on it...
> but that's another story.)
> 
> It uses a new table to store the times I start
> watching recordings or live tv, and the times I end. 
> There is some very basic logic to combine events that
> occur close enough together (according to a threshold
> in settings).
> 
> I then have a perl script that scans the table and
> makes a little report on how much time we spent
> watching TV in the last 24 hours.  I have a cron
> script that sends it to me each day.
> 
> First, if there is any interest in this, I'd be glad
> to pass these things along.  It could probably use
> some polishing by better hands if it were to go beyond
> my box, but it's a working first cut.
> 
> Second, I could use some advice.  I wrote everything
> to support multiple users, since the accountability
> factor goes way down if you can blame the large
> viewing times on someone else in your head.  The
> trouble is, this is the first time I've done anything
> in QT, and I have only pidly experience writing GUI
> stuff.  I can follow stuff around to some degree, but
> I'm not sure of the best way to do something new. 
> What I need is a GUI way to find out who is watching
> when a show or live TV is started.
> 
> Obviously, the more streamlined the better.  I'm
> thinking that a popup could show up with each name
> displayed as a checkbox and and OK button to get on
> with it.  Perhaps a number key could toggle each box,
> and another key could hit OK (to cut down on arrow key
> manip).  This would only add two keystrokes to the
> viewing process as the cost of accountability (or
> three if two people are watching, etc).
> 
> For my stuff to work, I just need a QStringList of
> users watching when a show is started.  This list
> should be generated by a GUI and stuck somewhere
> accessible.  My stuff comprises two functions in the
> TV class: ViewTimeLogStart(QStringList&) and
> ViewTimeLogStop(), as well as the calls in 
> TV::HandleStateChange.  There's really nothing in them that 
> requires them to stay in TV though... it was just convenient 
> since I got it working with calls in HandleStateChange.  
> Perhaps someplace else is better???
> 
> I don't really understand the entire state change path
> that makes everything run, but as best as I can
> figure, perhaps a popup should be spawned in
> TVMenuCallback(...) (mythfrontend/main.cpp).  It could
> make the QStringList, stick it somewhere
> (MythContext?), get rid of itself, and then call the
> intended function (startTV() or startPlayback()).  If
> it weren't for live TV, it seems like it would be much
> easier to modify the popup infrastructure already
> built in PlaybackBox.
> 
> So my questions: What is required for me to build a
> popup dialog from scratch?  I'm assuming the Myth
> widget set should make this pretty easy for someone
> who has a clue, but I'm not in that group myself. 
> Which widgets should be used?  How do I use them? 
> Should the popup live in the global namespace of
> main.cpp?   And is there a place that makes more sense
> to jam this popup into rather than TVMenuCallback()?
> 
> Thanks for any help.  I'd be thrilled to work with
> anyone GUI-savvy that is interested in this
> functionality.
> 
> Brett
> 
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