[mythtv] More scheduling scheduler

[Marco Nelissen]

>    > Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 13:43:13 +1000
>    > From: Max Barry <mythtv at maxbarry.com>
>
>    > I also have a related suggestion. After playing around for a while, I
>    > found that having "-" indicate start-early and "+" indicate end-late
>    > became confusing. I think it would be more intuitive if "+" always meant
>    > "more recording time" and "-" always meant "less recording time". So if
>    > you have a 1-minute start-early buffer and a 2-minute end-late buffer,
>    > it would display as "(+1 +2)", not "(-1 +2)".
>
>How about "(1+ +2)" and "(1- +2)" instead?  Would that make sense?
>(Seems to make more sense to me---makes it really obvious the times
>are bookending the show, and how.)
>
>[Another idea might be "(1< >2)" and "(>1 >2)" where the <> are trying
>to be arrows "pushing" in the right direction; notice that this shows
>"start late" in -two- different ways to make it harder to overlook
>(e.g., it both uses a ">" -and- it puts it -before- the digit if we're
>talking about -starting- late, hence ">1").  I can't decide if that
>seems clearer to me than other ideas, or more confusing, but it seems
>like it might work:  "(1< >2)" starts 1m early and ends 2m late,
>whereas "(>1 2<)" starts 1m late and ends 2m early.  If we had real
>arrows in the font, this would work even better, but I'm not sure if
>kluging it with "->" and "<-" is worth the extra 2 characters per item.]

I don't know how "international" you want to be, but note that having
arrows and whatnot might not be the most intuitive thing for some
locales. While for western locales it is immediately obvious that the
first number refers to the start and the second to the end, people
whose native script goes right-to-left might find it less obvious.
Might be better to spell it out in greater detail, e.g. "start 1 minute
early" instead of "+1" or ">1".

Marco