[mythtv] patch - user rankings

[Kirby Vandivort]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 12:41:11PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
> Kirby Vandivort wrote:
> >This patch adds in the ability for users to rank shows according to how
> >much they like/dislike them.  It will eventually be used to feed the
> >recommendation engine.  So, once this is in, start ranking your shows.
> >You can rank shows from the info box on a recording, from the delete
> >box on a recording, from the info box on a program, and from the
> >advanced recording options on a recording.  You can view ranked shows
> >from the 'schedule recordings' menu and tweak their rankings from that
> >page.
> 
> A couple things struck me right away. First, this is incorrectly
> named. It should be rating rather than ranking as this rates
> titles rather than ranking them (a hotel may have a five star
> rating and may be included in a ranking of the top ten hotels
> in the world).

rating already has a defined meaning in the world of 'things you can
view on a screen' though (G, PG, PG-13, R, TVG, TVPG, TV14, etc),
which is why that wasn't used.  And, tables already exist in myth,
('programrating', for instance) that store that information.

> The page for viewing the ratings was on the Schedule Recordings
> page but it does not select or list shows that will or won't
> be recorded. This should probably be in Setup->TV Settings
> instead of overfilling the Schedule Recordings menu. The rating
> for any scheduled show can still be modified from any options
> page under the Schedule Recordings menu. If someone wanted to
> revisit and rerate shows (relatively rare) they can go to the
> setup section much like the channel priorities.

I agree that it isn't really part of 'schedule recordings'.  However,
I don't think that it is a setting, either.  Channel priorities barely
fits in the 'setting' area because it is information that gets applied to
sections in the TV area (which kinda makes it a setting), but it isn't,
imho, intuitive that to set a channel recording priority you have to into
the mythtv settings.  

Really, the 'view rankings' page is informational more than anything else.
It just so happens that you can tweak the rankings from that page,
but that is kinda auxiliary.

> The box for the list of rated titles is as big as possible and
> once again presses text all the way to the edges. The box could
> be shorter by at least two rows and allow more border space.
> There are other pages that also push things outside of reasonable
> overscan areas but these should be fixes too. There is no reason
> that this page needs to press things off the edge.

This page follows the exact structure of other existing pages regarding
distance to edges.  The box is a bit taller because there wasn't a need
for additional info at the bottom.

I was under the impression that over/underscan issues (at a lower level
than theme gui design) are supposed to allow the entire 800x600 screen
space to be used when designing menus and pages.  But, if there is a
defined amount of this space that we shouldn't be using I guess there
are, as you said, lots of pages that need to be changed.

> A spinbox would probably be a better choice than a slider on the
> options page for setting the rating. It would be more consistent
> with other things on the options page and would take up less
> space on this already crowded page.

The exact nature of the look is still a bit in flux.  Isaac had mentioned
a star type thing similar to the mythmusic stuff.  Right now, the same
object is being used for all the pages, but something like a spinbox
on that page could save some valuable space...

> On the info popup, "Select action:" should probably be below the
> slider right before the buttons.

I had considered placement on this.  I wanted to balance location
with something that would be clear to the user that it is a modifiable
setting, etc.  I guess I could be convinced to go either way on this.

-- 

Kirby Vandivort                      Theoretical and 
Senior Research Programmer            Computational Biophysics 
Email: kvandivo at ks.uiuc.edu          3051 Beckman Institute
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~kvandivo/    University of Illinois
Phone: (217) 244-5711                405 N. Mathews Ave
Fax  : (217) 244-6078                Urbana, IL  61801, USA