[Mythtv-soc] MythWeather-revamp: status report 6/23/06

[Lucien D.]

The end is in sight for the infrastructure changes I plan on making, there will
of course be unplanned ones as I continue working on the ui.

I added a functionality to allow scripts to provide a default update timeout
value. 

I Re-implemented the pause screen functionality.

I set it up so keystrokes not handled at the top level (pause, menu, exit,
etc...) can be passed on to the individual screen.

I changed weather-ui.xml around to make it easier to parse, also to make it
easier to add screens.  It now differentiates between on screen items which
are static (labels, logos, etc) and dynamic.  It then can differentiate between
dynamic items which are required before a screen is shown, and ones which are
not required.  The code currently supports text, images, and hopefully animated
images, though I haven't tested it yet.  

The screen objects now load the list of items they require (i.e. the dynamic
items mentioned above) from the xml file instead of having them hard-coded into
subclasses as above.  With a little more tweaking once the config stuff is done,
this should allow for writing of dialogs by simply having a source script that
is appropriate, and defining it in the weather-ui.xml file. You will also be
able to subclass the WeatherScreen class to customize screens even further.

The current thing I am working on is writing the code to implement the required
settings infrastructure.  Since I plan on it being possible for per-screen
settings, and also for having multiple instances of the same screen (with
different locations or units if desired) this will be significantly more complex
than what was previously required.  I have yet to figure out exactly how to
represent the various relationships between individual data items, screens,
locations, and source, once I do, I will outline how to represent them in the
db, and start getting the code implemented.  Assuming no major problems, I hope
to have it implemented next week.  After this I can start implementing
screens and sources, and finally show some results for all my work.


-Lucien