[mythtv] Ticket #1771: "All Programs" specific ascending/descending order

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/09/2006 11:18 AM, John P Poet wrote:
> This patch allows the "All Programs" or "Default" section to be
> controlled *independant* of the individual "titles" section.
>
> Personally, I like the "Titles" sections to be sorted in *ascending*
> order by "Original Air Date" so I can easily watch the programs in the
> correct order.  However, I like the "All Programs" section to be
> sorted in *descending* order so I can see what has been recorded
> recently.  Does that make sense?
>   

I was going to mention something when you posted the patch, but decided 
I should do some due diligence (looking at the code and/or write a 
patch) first.  Unfortunately, I won't be around to do so for a while 
(perhaps as much as 2 months), so I figured I might as well mention the 
idea now...

Anyway, personally, I like the idea of user-customizable sorting 
options, but I don't like those options being buried in the settings, 
and I really dislike having to go to settings to change the sort order.  
What I would like to see is an "interactive" sorting facility so the 
user can specify the sort order as appropriate for the list he/she is 
currently viewing (and specify the same sort order again to toggle 
between ascending/descending sort).  Then, we could remove all the 
settings for sorting (PlayBoxEpisodeSort, PlayBoxOrdering, and possibly 
others that I don't know off-hand) and replace them with a single one 
specifying the user's default handling of sorting (i.e. "Always sort by 
..." or "Remember last-used sort" or "Remember last-used sort by 
list"--wording could be improved a bit^H^H^Hlot, though ;).  With this 
approach, we can use originalairdate when available and switch to 
starttime for shows whose originalairdate is not available/not 
appropriate, and we could sort "All Programs" one way and Lost a 
different way and .  :)

Doing this would require a new table specifying the list view and the 
desired sort order.  The list view could be any of "All Programs", or 
specific recgroup, category, or show names--to handle all the possible 
"left-hand column names" users may see in the playbackbox, depending on 
DisplayGroupDefaultView.

Oh, and once we go to that point, making the left-hand column names 
interactive would be great--so I don't have to deal with 
DisplayGroupDefaultView, either.  ;)  If we did these changes, sorting 
and "views" would both be user-interactive, like filtering (by recgroup) 
currently is.

Anyway, I'll probably look at doing something like that (unless I'm told 
proactively that the patch won't be accepted), but it will probably be 
quite some time before I can work on it.  If you happened to do it 
first, though, I'd be happy to test it for you.  ;)

Mike