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

[Justin Hornsby]

>Matching themes have been available for many years, at least the 6 or 7 I've been using myth. They didn't work 6 years ago, they didn't work 3 years ago, they don't work now. It's >an idea whose time never came. I didn't care because it was always easy to make things right.
>
>No need to follow up here but ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish through intransigence. A better myth experience isn't what's flowing out of it and ain't that what it's all >about kids?

No need to follow up here?!  You are joking, right?

Do you know how many hours, days, weeks & months can go into making a
theme for MythTV?  Do you have any idea at all?  What have you done
for MythTV lately?  If your only idea for improving this project is to
insist the developers revert to making the UI inconsistent again then
that isn't going to help.  I have to admit I had a little double-take
when I saw the initial commits for integrating GUI & OSD themes but I
agree with the developers 100% on this.

As a former prodigious theme creator (ProjectGrayhem,
ProjectGrayhem-wide, ProjectGrayhemOSD, Blootube, Blootube-wide,
Blootube-OSD, Glass-wide, Glasswide-OSD & a couple of one-off hacks
I've done for a certain distro) I think MythTV's UI has made countless
improvements in recent releases. A unified UI ***IS*** the way
forward.  I always did my outright best within the confines of what
the UI allowed to make all my themes as good as they could possibly
be.  Sometimes the way the UI was coded meant I had to make
compromises I didn't want to have to make.  All the work on MythUI &
the new OSD stuff has brought everything together in ways I could only
dream about when I was making ProjectGrayhem.

I've tried out all the current UI & OSD themes. I loved Arclight to
bits but my wife wasn't a fan of the text size so guess what? For the
last few months in odd bits of spare time I've been pulling my finger
out making my own.  It's not hard but boy is it still a slog.

Sure, a WYSIWYG theme editor would likely make life a lot easier but
think about that for one second.  Every screen, every popup... by the
time you've finished doing an editor for that you could have rewritten
almost the whole UI.  Nobody in their right mind is going to be
willing to take that on & maintain it!

As far as user definable font sizes are concerned - I was incredibly
glad to see the back of those.  IMHO text areas & font sizes should be
built into the theme.  If something's too small, or there's not enough
room around things you're stuck with it unless you set to editing XML.
That's much better than the alternative.

With a project like MythTV and its aims of having a UI which is
legible from your armchair there's always a balance to strike between
the size of elements and the amount of information onscreen.  Some
people may feel that the current themes have gone too far one way -
that's fine - but I wasn't amenable to the idea of making massive
changes to my own work to fit somebody's wishes & I don't see why
anybody else should either.  This is what open source is all about.
You don't like the way something is done, so you pull your finger out,
step off your soapbox & set to putting it right.

Justin.