[mythtv-users] Plugin Suggestion

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 04:57:02PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> As someone who orders fairly frequently from both PH and PJ's online,
> I'm sympathetic to your cause, but I don't think it would work all that
> well in practice, for two reasons:
> 
> 1)	Doing that sort of thing reliably requires an API interface
> 	from the provider; if you don't have one, they're *guaranteed*
> 	to change the interface you're scraping to suit themselves,
> 	oftentimes fairly frequently.
> 
> 	If you're hitting them from a centralized place, chasing after
> 	it is probably both practical and worthwhile. If a billion and
> 	6 copies of a doenloaded plugin have to chase them... not so
> 	much.
> 
> 2)	Both providers tend to add fairly useful functionality to their
> 	Web UI's on a faily regular basis (and lately, neither of them
> 	has broken anything I like), so not only do you have to worry
> 	about chasing the base functionality, you either have to chase
> 	the extended functions as well, or deny them to your users.

And I apologize; I forgot #3, and it's the killer:

3)	It is the general observed behavior of retail product providers
with online websites for sales that they want *all* the business, and
they therefore tend to look down on any standardized interfaces of the
types that would make this easier (since it makes it *easier* for
customers to split their business).  The more suppliers and the smaller
they are, the more likely they are to buy it, but between PH and PJ...

Naaah...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274

	     Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
	     Those who count the vote decide everything.
	       -- (Joseph Stalin)