[mythtv-users] "broken" as a synonym for "not as I expected." WAS: Re: mythvideo sort order

[Phil Wild]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Julius Roberts <hooliowobbits at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 20 June 2011 23:25, Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 6:15 AM, Phil Wild <phil at holobyte.com.au> wrote:
> >> Can anyone confirm this same behavior?
> >
> > People need to stop using the word "broken" as a synonym for "not as I
> expected."  ;)
>
> No offense intended to Robert, and i know he was joking, but this
> comment nonetheless did stick in my head for a few days as not being
> quite right.  I was doing some reading and i came upon The Cathedral
> and the Bazaar "..Any tool should be useful in the expected way..
> ..but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected."**.
>
> My point in raising this is that it is all well and good to have
> developed complicated software for some fantastic task, but if it
> doesn't work the way people might usually expect it to, then that in
> my mind is it's not reasonable to blame the user for their poor
> perception of the issue.  There's complicated, and then there's just
> plain poorly executed.
>
> just my $0.02 worth..
>
>
Being the OP of the initial thread and also the poster that stated it was
broken, I just thought I should add my 0.02c as well ;-)

When I read "Browse by date added" in a menu I would expect the outcome to
display the data in a usable list. It works this way in most things that I
use from Picassa through to similar components such as  a Western Digital
Media player in that the raw date is used to sort rather than the
represented date string based on user preference. Granted, I could go into
my settings and change the date format so that it is displayed as YYYY-MM-DD
and that would make it actually usable to an extent.

We have been told that 0.25 will bring in the sort by date added within the
filter menu, but this is distinctly different to the browse by date added
function which was closest to what I was originally wanting to do. I have a
directory structure where movies and tv shows are filed in different folders
along with kids vs adults etc. The 0.25 feature will maintain the folder
view, but will list the subcontents of each folder in date added order
(using the actual date value hopefully).

The browse by date added function (which is what I wanted to do) should give
me my whole collection browsable by date added regardless of location. And
to make it usable, it should be sorted by date value and not by date string.

I guess I was wrong in saying broken because it is doing exactly as it was
programmed to do, As an architect though, If I asked a developer to write
something to allow me to browse by date I would not have expected to get
what mythtv is providing...

I personally believe the function should be "modified" or removed and would
be interested in others opinions. I am wondering if anyone even uses it in
it's current form. No one seemed to stick up for my way of thinking which I
thought was strange and hence I let it die and did not raise it as a bug to
be addressed. I kind of think the current implementation would be analogous
to "browse by title but sort by number of characters in the title" if that
makes sense...

Cheers

Phil
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