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

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/01/2011 12:01 PM, Dan Armbrust wrote:
>> Yes the user should have to learn to edit a theme in order to make
>> that change.  This is a specific one of a kind modification that
>> anybody can do in the text editor of their choice.  "Learning" how to
>> do this is not a major inconvenience.
>>
>> I say if font sizes were adjustable via the mythfrontend GUI it would
>> take the user longer to perform the modification.  GUI's with five+
>> layer deep sub-menus, slider bars, check boxes, ratio buttons, etc.
>> take a lot longer to adjust than a simple XML formated text file.
> And this attitude, in a nutshell, is why myth will never be user
> friendly enough for anyone but a technical geek to use.
>
> In windows 7, you choose "Small, Medium or Large".  In myth, folks
> think that the "easy" way is to go manually edit XML.

We /used/ to allow the user to select one of 3 different font sizes:  
"Small", "Default", and "Big."  The 3 different font sizes were 
specified by the theme--which meant that themers had to do three times 
the work to create a theme.  The end result is that few themes actually 
specified more than a single font size, and those that did still only 
really worked properly if you chose the same font size that the theme 
author was using (so, for some themes, that was "Default," for others it 
was "Small,"  etc.).  The end result was that the themes that specified 
multiple were actually hard to use, since you had to figure out which of 
the 2 or 3 specified font sizes actually worked--which required a lot of 
trial and error or actually reading the theme files.

If you'd like, I can give you links to about 100 (not an exaggeration) 
different threads where users complained that the "Small", "Default", 
and "Big" font size setting didn't work...  The above explains exactly 
why it didn't work.  Therefore, we removed it.  If someone wants to 
redesign a theme for a different font size, they're welcome to do 
so--but we no longer force that job on the themer.  We have a hard 
enough time getting people to create themes without requiring that they 
do all the work 3 times.

> Sigh.

I know the feeling.  It's almost as if no one recognizes that we've 
written the code before and found that it can't possibly work properly 
or that laying out a MythTV theme is /not/ as simple as laying out the 
desktop on MS Windows, so having the computer just modify the theme 
doesn't work.  I just wish someone would say so...  (Oh, wait.)

Mike