[mythtv-users] mythtv-setup with mouse cursor problems and blank screen

f-myth-users at media.mit.edu f-myth-users at media.mit.edu
Mon Jul 23 20:03:23 UTC 2007


>   Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:44:59 +0100
>   From: Paul Harrison <mythtv at dsl.pipex.com>

>   A clear case of *PEBKAC :-)

Quoting an entire 83-line message in order to issue a one-line insult
to a brand-new user is not the most helpful response you could have
made, especially to an issue that has bitten several people and to
someone who is clearly completely frustrated at wasting a lot of his
time on something that looks like it should have been dead simple.  It
also gives new users a negative impression of the sociology of the
Myth mailing lists, and who could blame them for that impression?

To the OP:  mythtv-setup's UI is a fakeout.  While it sure looks like
any other ordinary configuration page from any other program, it was
apparently written from the point of view that you'd be configuring
Myth -from your television-.  As such, mouse gestures are at best
poorly supported and at worst simply ignored.  [In fact, I've always
assumed that the mouse cursor disappeared because Myth assumes you're
actually watching TV and hence the cursor would be irritating.  I'm
not sure why this carries over to mythtv-setup, though, since you're
-not- watching TV while using that, but whatever.]

Instead, Myth expects you to have a keyboard connected, or to have
-already- configured LIRC or some other software to receive keypresses
from your remote, and that you have mapped some of those buttons to,
e.g., the arrow keys you typically find on a PC keyboard.  You then
have to do all the setup by using arrow keys to handle the pulldowns. [*]

This is not the most intuitive introduction to Myth (especially when,
by definition, it's the very first thing you have to do to use Myth at
all), but unfortunately experienced users and developers are so
adapted to it that they don't notice the problems new users have, so
no one ever changes it because those most likely to be able to do so
are least likely to notice the problems.

Also, in general, going in and changing things directly in the
database using MySQL is considered "unsupported" and will likely cause
some to claim you should reinstall so you can start off from a known
state when people are trying to help you debug; there is certainly
merit in this position, since Myth can be put into arbitrarily strange
states by such editing---it's akin to bypassing the API and all of the
RepInvariants it might be trying to enforce.

[*] ...after also compensating for the confusion that can arise when
fields go both -across- and -down- the page, but only the -down- arrow
keys move between fields while the -across- arrow keys allow you to
access the fields' contents; this fakes me out every time I have to
do this, for several reasons:  because of the "next field isn't always
below last field" issue in the layout; because I tend to think of
"pulldowns" as wanting "up/down cursor keys"; and because I use that
interface as rarely as possible (usually I use MythWeb, or anything
else possible besides the on-screen interface).  [In fact, I had to
try it out just now to confirm the field vs pulldown cursor-key
mapping; I remembered it backwards and would have written the wrong
thing above if I hadn't retried it.  Note that the above comments are
based on 0.18.1, not 0.20 or SVN.  However, it seems clear from the
OP's message that mouse-based configuration is still confusing.]


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