[mythtv] RFC: MythPopupMenu

[Tako Schotanus]

> Tako,
> 
> > Well this thread was made because of the patch I sent in 
> that gives the 
> > Watch en Delete Recordings a popup menu that contains all 
> the available 
> > functionality for those pages.
> > 
> > So I'll ask what I asked in that thread: are there any 
> other parts of 
> > Myth(TV) that you think need this kind of dialog? If so, 
> let me know and 
> > I'll see if I have time to make similar popups for those 
> parts as well.
> 
> My post wasn't ment as a feature request, but as a basis to discuss a 
> possible shift in paradigm towards a popup menu controlled (with 
> short-cuts) rather than a key controlled myth. However, I must admit 
> that my knowledge of Qt is not yet good enough to estimate the 
> implementation impact such a paradigm change would imply. But I'll 
> definitely give it some thought (and possible try it on a small scale 
> example).

I just don't think it's much of a paradigm shift, it's just about making
sure that you can reach all functionality using an absolute minimum of
buttons/keys. The point is that this has been discussed more than once
and nothing will happen if we don't just "go and do it". And right now
I'm volunteering for the job ;-)

The paradigm shift is needed in the minds of the developers that need to
be aware that they should design their interfaces to be usable using
only 7 buttons (ex numbers) or so (you might even try to go for only 5
but that might be a bit too restrictive): up, down, left, right, select,
menu and exit.

> 
> If this approach is feasible then it should be used wherever keyboard 
> input is required (after all it is configurable and of course 
> a standard 
> short-cut config file should be provided to mimic the setup currently 
> described in keys.txt).

It's this shortcut thing that is going to need more work than the menu
popup stuff. The menu stuff is more or less easy because most screens
have a menu anyway so it's just about making sure it contains all
possible actions. But a generic shorcut system on the other hand _will_
mean changes to lot's of parts of the code, so we might need to think
about how to properly solve that problem, yes. (There has been an entire
thread about this already with all kinds of ideas about how to solve the
hard-coded keyboard shortcut problem).

> 
> Philippe
> 
>