[mythtv-users] Merge of OSD and Main themes causes WAF to Plummet

[George Nassas]

On 2011-02-25, at 8:53 PM, Robert McNamara wrote:

> It is impossible for a themer to be able to offer a unified UI,

Yes, yes please, make it impossible. Pretty please. With carrots on top.

I have used myth a long time and have never encountered a theme with a decent UI and OSD. I've tried a lot of them and it's either one or the other. Never both. Maybe there's something genetic where being good at one makes you incapable of the other. Can't say why. Don't know.

The reason I use myth is to record TV shows and later watch them later. I want the list of shows to be clear and while watching I want the position/remaining/etc info to be clear. That's important. Having them match stylistically is not important to me. It really isn't. It's like #387 on the list of myth things I care about. Way down there. I really don't care about visual matching. I don't.

I get that you think you're making an improvement. And perhaps for yourself and some people you are. Possibly for many people. Over here it feels like pointless friction. If I recall the commit message where the merge happened there's no technical reason why the UI and OSD have to come from the same place. So it's like intentional friction. Where's the big win here?

To the OP: you can mix and match theme elements if you're feeling brave. Basically you copy a UI theme you like (new dir name & adjust the name in themeinfo.xml) plus copy in another theme's osd.xml plus png/jpg elements to make a new UI / OSD combo. Put the directory in the mythtv user's .mythtv/Themes (I think) folder and it should show up in the theme selections. I've done this and it works ok. The problem is theme elements are still evolving and when your base themes get updated of course you have to remerge which can get tiresome.

If you build myth yourself it make be easy enough to fix it the code. I have't looked and anyway don't like running a lot of local patches for things that belong in the base application.

- George