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

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

[I'm replying to multiple messages at once here to keep things neater.]

    > Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:18:07 -0500
    > From: Matt Mossholder <matt at mossholder.com>

    > According to dictionary.com:
    >	    Scheduled - To plan or appoint for a certain time or date: scheduled a
    > trip in June; was scheduled to arrive Monday.

"Pedanticism in support of a sucky user interface is no virtue."

Do I really think the Mythweb UI sucks?  Of course not.  I said that
to, as BJM put it recently, "get your attention."

It seems to -me- that the purpose of the "Scheduled Recordings" page
is to give one-stop shopping on all capture-critical events that are
going to be happening soon.  (Why capture-critical?  See below.)  That
means, in addition to what's -about- to happen, what -is- happening,
namely current captures.  Having to visit the backend-status page to
figure -that- out is (a) dangerously error-prone (see oops below) and
(b) unnecessariy unsettling ("hey, where did that recording just go?
oh, wait, if I look over -here-" it's actually running").

I'm guessing (I haven't had time to track it down in the code yet)
that the reason this isn't happening already is that it was annoying
to code, e.g., that mythweb gets the info about stuff that hasn't
started yet from one table, whereas the stuff that -has- started is
represented differently.  That made the implementation easier, but at
the cost of user convenience and (apparently) blown captures... :)

How hard would it be to do it better?

    > Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 00:32:20 +0000
    > From: Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com>

    > For the archives (using 0.18.1), in MythWeb in-progress recordings are
    > listed on the Recorded Programs page once they have started and have
    > been removed from the scheduled recordings page.

I would argue that in-progress recordings should appear in -both-
places, because they conceptually -are- in both places---partially
recorded, and partially not.  What's wrong with making this critical
information---arguably the absolute #1 reason for Myth's existence in
the first place, which is capturing video---redundantly available?

    > Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:49:49 -0800
    > From: Chris Petersen <lists at forevermore.net>

    > > Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 00:47:13 GMT
    > > From: Mark Smith <mark at chez-moi.org.uk>
    > > As someone who has actually managed to stop the backend whilst a recording
    > > was in progress, having checked the scheduled recordings to make sure it
    > > wasn't due to record anything, I'd quite like this as well.... :)

Oops!  I wonder how many other people have been zapped this way.

    > That's what the "backend status" page is for.  Since there are a lot of 
    > things the backend might be doing besides recording.

But are any of the other things the backend might be doing things that
will lose data if the backend is shut down?  Sure, it might be
transcoding or commflagging, but those are recoverable immediately
after boot.  Accidentally booting a backend out from under a capture,
though, is fatal---the data's just gone, with no chance of recovering
whatever came down the wire while the machine was cycling, and the
resulting recording is split in half.

And besides, it's just -confusing-, as I mentioned above---it makes it
that much harder to really see what the state of the box is if you
have to check -two- places (what's happening now? what's happening
soon?) instead of just looking at it all neatly summarizeed at the top
of one page.

P.S.  Anybody have any comments on the whole how-do-I-turn-off-the-colors
question that started me off on this? :)