[mythtv-users] Gloss Mythtv frontend replacement

[Jason Keirstead]

> I read it and like I said, he's doing great things, but as you say, 
> hardly finished, etc.  But if you consider just putting his UI work on 
> the already finished framework on the frontend, you do have a finished 
> product that benefits from all his UI coding rather than a partially 
> functional program.  Just saying, it's too bad he didn't take that 
> route as it may have already resulted in something fruitful instead of 
> just potential.
I disagree and agree with the GP poster. People who keep saying "on he 
should have done this to improve the current mythfrontend" are 
overlooking MANY things - for starters, his whole front end is written 
in python using an OpenGL library. He has (or has in progress) 
replacements for all the core mythfrontend modules already. 
"'Integrating" this into mythfrontend C++ code is simply impractical // 
impossible - he has already gone way beyond what the current frontend 
plugin API allows. Also, because it is pure OpenGL and does not depend 
on Qt, Gloss is free to do many things the normal mythfrontend does not 
have the luxury of. The downside of course is Gloss requires a good 
OPenGL GPU, whereas the current mythfrontend does not, and can even run 
under framebuffer.

Frankly, I think he has made more progress in many areas by himself in 
the past few months than mythfrontend has in the past 2 years. Most of 
the core myth developers are not concerned with the areas this guy is 
working on (eye candy) and so they have stagnated to the point where it 
is probably better to just start from scratch.

This isn't to knock the myth developers in any way. Like all open source 
people do what they enjoy. I am sure back 5 years ago lots of people 
said "oh why are you re-inventing the wheel, your time woould be better 
spent improving the Freevo project!"

I have worked on open source projects in the past as well and have seen 
this argument before (oh why are you doing X when you could just be 
improving Y), and really, it holds little water. New ideas are always 
good. I just say leave this guy alone - personally I hope soon to be 
able to just replace mythfrontend with gloss altogether, since it will 
meet my needs just fine when it is finished.