[mythtv] Re: Propossed change to the ProgLister

[Bruce Markey]

J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
...

> By the way, this just went to me, or so it appears...  I'm cc'ing the 
> -dev list

That's odd. The headers in the message I sent had:

To: "J. Donavan Stanley" <jdonavan at jdonavan.net>, 
 David Engel <gigem at comcast.net>
CC: Isaac Richards <ijr at po.cwru.edu>

but there is no reason the not post this to -dev .

>> Actually, I like the idea of limiting the view to premium channels.
>> A couple observations on this implementation though.
>>
>> To change, say, category views for a list with havePremiumChannels,
>> the key strokes would be M,down,down,M rather than just M. I find
>> that when I'm searching there is a very high ratio of pages viewed
>> vs items set to record so it would make more sense to have Choose
>> Category as the default at the top.
> 
> That makes sense to me.  That was my biggest concern with this, 
> introducing extra button presses to what had been a single press action.

It would still be two key strokes but I agree it would make more
sense.

>> The new override menus says "Edit Options" so that may be more
>> consistent phrasing than "Edit Recording".
> 
> Or maybe "Edit Recording Options" to be completely accurate?

Possibly but what I guess I meant to suggest is to go to the
conflicts page and press SELECT on a few different items to
see the buttons that David is using. It would make sense to
use the same text for the same option buttons in both places.

>> I also want to pass the buck ,-) to David for the bigger picture
>> of views. I like the idea of using MENU, PREVVIEW and NEXTVIEW in
>> a consistent way across the interface and hope we can move further
>> in that direction. Limiting the items in the list box by premium
>> channel is another "view" and adding another method of changing the
>> view by adding another popup doesn't feel right.
> 
> 
> The problem is that doing it as another view results in double the 
> amount of views.  This is more like applying a filter against the 
> current view.

Hold off until the next paragraph please...

>> Another approach may be to add a special item at the top of the
>> view list like the "<New Phrase>" on the keyword search pages. So
>> maybe "<Premium Channels>" or "<All Channels>". Selecting this item
>> would stay on the same category, keyword, or whatever but would
>> change which channels are included in the view list. There would
>> then be no need for an extra popup and all the other button options
>> on jdonavan's popup could still be reached through RECORD, SELECT
>> or INFO.

So I'm not suggesting doubling the number of views but rather just
adding one special item to toggle between Premium and All. Only
one more item and only when havePremiumChannels is true.

> The popup menu also helps with usability IMO.  Fewer keys/buttons to 
> remember.

Hey, that's what I was after, fewer keys/buttons to figure out.
I must have failed to express what I meant.

The Category popup currently has:

+-----------------------+
| Select Category       |
|+---------------------+|
||Action:::::::::::::::||
||Adults only          ||
||Adventure            ||
||Animals              ||
...

Add a special item at the top of the list:

+-----------------------+
| Select Category       |
|+---------------------+|
||<Premium Channels>   ||
||Action:::::::::::::::||
||Adults only          ||
||Adventure            ||
||Animals              ||
...

Press SELECT on "<Premium Channels>" and it would show all Action
on commfree stations. Pressing MENU again should then have
"<All Channels>" to switch back.

The only new feature you're adding is switching between Premium and
All which is a change of view sort of thing. If this was a special
item on the existing view list popup, there would be no need for
another popup, other buttons, extra keystrokes.

>> I've attached my changes as a patch if you'd like to try it out.
>>
>> I've re-attached to make sure we all have it.
> 
> 
> And I've re-re-attached it.

I won't re-re-re-attach this time ;-).

--  bjm