[mythtv-users] Labels instead of Recording Groups

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/11/2012 02:44 PM, Joseph Fry wrote:
> In an age where strict "folder based" organization is losing it's 
> appeal, I find that recording groups are very frustrating.
>
> Both my personal and work emails are organized using labels 
> (categories in MS Outlook).  I frequently assign multiple labels to a 
> single email and when I click on the "folder" representing that label 
> I see all the associated emails, even if they appear in other 
> "folders" too.  I haven't moved email out of my inbox folder in years, 
> opting to filter it with labels instead.
>
> Currently we have several hundred recordings, many of which 3 or more 
> members of my family are interested in watching.  While we can mark an 
> episode watched, or move it to someones recording group... there is no 
> way to easily know if everyone interested has watched it so either it 
> sits on the system until I can get everyone in the same room and go 
> through them all... or we delete recordings that not everyone has 
> seen; both options are frustrating.
>
> I would like to propose a bounty to have recording groups replaced by 
> labels, similar to labels in gmail;

I'm already working on converting our recording groups to "tags" (which 
will be very much like gmail labels).  I plan to push initial support 
for it (which will only have very basic UI support) soon (after some 
work stuff slows down), and hope that doing so will allow our UI experts 
to help extend the UI support.

The plan is that users will be able to apply any number of user-defined 
tags on any number of recordings.  There will be no "built-in" 
tags--everything will be user-defined.  However (at least eventually), 
there should be sufficient capability for you to automatically assign 
tags for whatever purpose/to represent whatever data you desire.

The change will also allow modification of Watch Recordings to all 
better filtering as well as better playlist support.  The reason I don't 
see a need for the built-in/info tags is because I also plan to allow 
better use of other (non-tag) existing data in filtering/playlists.

As far as multiple users, we do plan to have proper multi-user support 
so that you don't have to find work arounds (like using recording 
groups/labels/tags) for it.

I mentioned the plan for tags a while back (at 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/485475#485475 ), but 
haven't talked in detail about it.  Keep watching -commits and you 
should see the ideas taking shape.  :)

Mike