[mythtv-users] Various MythWeb nits and gripes---can I fix these somehow?

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:38:19 -0600
    > From: "Adam Bodnar" <ambodnar at gmail.com>

    > On 2/17/06, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu <f-myth-users at media.mit.edu> wrote:
    > > And what the outlines/dotted-lines/etc mean (also in scheduled-recordings)
    > > has to be reversed-engineered from the full listing; -that's- an
    > > application where coloring the boxes might make things easier to read,
    > > but only if the boxes aren't already colored by genre, and only if the
    > > colors are arranged in some sensible fashion.  (Given a list of "types
    > > of outlines" I could take a swing at what -I- think is "sensible" and
    > > see if anyone else agrees... :)

    > When you hover over the title of a show you will get a popup and there
    > is a Notes: section. The text inside this corresponds to the type of
    > outline.

...right...  but then you have to do the "reverse-engineering" part,
which is to do that for each different type of outline and try to
commit it to memory.  It seems like a tiny little legend somewhere
you could just flick your eyes to (or some more-intuitive coloring)
would be better.  [Yes, I'm ignoring issues of colorblind users here.]

After all, there's plenty of wasted space to both sides of the four
boxes at the top ("Display: Scheduled Duplicates Deactivated Conflicts") 
that you could put such a legend into, -OR- you could wrap the correct
outline -around- each of those four choices, or paint them different
colors corresponding to how you'll show them below---and then it's
both a direct, intuitive mapping, -and- it doesn't even take up any
more space.

    > > [And it seems that every time I turn off the Duplicates and Deactivated
    > > checkboxes on that page, they magically turn themselves back on the
    > > next time I visit the page from elsewhere.  Does this mean that
    > > something's still broken in my session stuff, or is this supposed
    > > to happen?  If the latter, how do I default them to OFF?  The page
    > > is -much- slower to load with them on, and I rarely want them on,
    > > and -furthermore- I can't even turn them both off at once---I have
    > > to click on one, wait and wait and wait for the page to reload, then
    > > turn off the other, and wait some more.  And then if I leave the page
    > > and come back, they're both on again!]

    > This is cause a session is tied to cookies that is stored in your
    > browser. Once you turn them off in one place, they will stay off in
    > that place, less you are not storing or clearing cookies.

As far as I know, I am storing all cookies.  But every time I return
to that page, the boxes are all set, even if I've cleared some before
leaving the page.  Apparently, that's a bug, so now I need to figure
out what's going wrong with either cookies or PHP session data, and
it'd be nice to have some idea of where to look.

    > > Also---the scheduled-recordings page doesn't seem to actually include
    > > recordings that are -currently being recorded-, but only things that
    > > haven't started yet.  This almost caused me to reboot the backend in
    > > the middle of a recording 'cause I thought it was idle, until I checked
    > > with mythfrontend (the "backend status" would also have told me).  This
    > > seems like a dangerous omission.  (It also once caused me to think that
    > > something I'd schedule got missed, until I realized that it was still
    > > being recorded by that the scheduled-recordings page wasn't showing it.)

    > Well, since technically those shows are not scheduled anymore, but
    > actually recording. They wouldn't show up on the scheduled recordings
    > page. :)

But a show that's currently recording -is- scheduled! :)

Let me put it this way:  If I'm currently -in- a meeting, that
meeting is -still- scheduled...  And it will -continue- to be
scheduled until it's -done-, e.g., until the ending time of the
meeting is in the past.  Otherwise, if I'm one minute late to a
meeting, I can just blow it off, because hey, it's not scheduled
any more so I don't have to go... :)

Now, one might argue that making in-progress episodes (those whose
start time has passed but whose end-time has not) show up differently
(new color?) from not-yet-in-progress episodes (those whose start time
is still in the future) might be nifty---and I'd certainly be very
much in favor of that, because it makes it even -harder- to accidentally
think you're not recording when you are---but it seems that the easiest
short-term fix is to at least not remove in-progress recordings from
the listing entirely.

(It really -would- be nifty to have in-progress show up differently
from in-the-future, btw...)