[mythtv] "A", "An", and "The" for sorting - ticket 3048

Peter Schachte schachte at csse.unimelb.edu.au
Fri Feb 16 07:08:08 UTC 2007


Chris Hamilton wrote:
> How about something like the following, where you have a search term at
> the top of the list.  You use up and down to to scroll through letters
> and numbers (and pgup/pgdn to jump through them). Once you have a letter
> selected you press the right arrow and it will allow you to enter the
> next letter.  As each letter is entered, the list below presents you
> only with those titles that match the prefix (likely a matching
> algorithm that considers only letters and numbers is appropriate,
> ignoring punctuation and symbols).

This sounds really good, except for the part about scrolling up and down
through the alphabet.  I find that kind of slow in the Find Program dialog,
too.  What if hitting a digit key in that dialog also jumped you proportionally
through the list (ie, through the alphabet).  So 0 positions you at A, 9 puts
you at Z, and 3 puts you at I (3/9 of 26 is 8.7, and I is the 9th letter).

Basically, any time you have a list that gets long enough to scroll and the
digit keys aren't already mapped to something else, they could be used for
quick proportional scrolling.  This would still be useful where the scrolling
list is not sorted alphabetically.

> Then, you have some other button to swap between the search term dialog
> and the results list.  When in the results list, using 0-9 could do the
> jump to 'percentage' thing if you wanted, while up/down pgup/pgdn would
> act as expected.
>
> The program finder and music browser could likely also benefit from such
>  a system.  Maybe it's possible to put together a general 'finder'
> dialog that you attach to an arbitrary data source?

I can imagine a general finder like this being very useful.  Anywhere you've
got a long alphabetically sorted list (even, eg, the mythvideo gallery view),
you could have a narrow column of letters down the left side of the screen and
a small text entry box at the top or bottom.  Left and right arrows jump
between the list on the right and letters on the left.  Selecting a letter by
hitting enter adds it to the text entry box, and narrows the list on the rest
of the screen to the items beginning with what's in the text entry.  Typing
letters on an proper keyboard could also just add letters to the text entry.
And you could use digit keys to scroll proportionally through the list on
whichever side of the screen you're currently on.

This'd be nice for the Find Program dialog, too.  Sometimes it'd be good to be
able to enter a second letter, and it'd definitely be nice not to have to
scroll through the alphabet one letter at a time.

-- 
Peter Schachte              My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you
schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU        today, that I've just signed legislation that'll
www.cs.mu.oz.au/~schachte/  outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in
Phone: +61 3 8344 1338      five minutes. -- Ronald Reagan


More information about the mythtv-dev mailing list