[mythtv-users] Programming remote button bindings (WAS: What major features are planned for 0.27?)

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Mon Dec 31 15:47:03 UTC 2012


On 11/30/2012 04:23 PM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
> On Friday 30 Nov 2012 12:18:57 Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 11/29/2012 07:32 AM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
>>> I was actually trying to help, since usability is my area of preofessional expertise. But I'm getting a real impression that the myth team aren't interested in making the user interface better, they only want more features and more stuff to fiddle with. So I give up, I'll go and try to help out with xbmc instead.
>> No, MythTV developers are working extremely hard to try to make things
>> easier for user and to make the user interface better.  However, we have
>> a plan for how it will be done--such that it doesn't just make things
>> easier for you (or other people who have a remote like yours) and at the
>> same time make things harder for other users (with remotes with very
>> different layouts).
> At the risk of going over the same old ground again, the kernel mappings of "the play button" to "KEY_PLAY" etc, make the remote layout irrelevant.

FWIW, what I'm saying is that remote layout is /not/ irrelevant because 
a remote with KEY_PLAY and no KEY_PAUSE needs different mappings than a 
remote with both KEY_PLAY and KEY_PAUSE (or, at least, it may, depending 
on what the user expects KEY_PLAY to do--nothing when playing or just 
toggle pause).

"Remote layout" = number and type of buttons available to map in the 
user interface--not "where on the remote the physical button exists".  
I.e. it corresponds to the keyboard model (PC102 or PC105 or ... as at 
ls /usr/src/linux-`uname -r`/drivers/input/keyboard ), not the keymap ( 
find /usr/share/keymaps ).  You can't use a QWERTY keymap on a numpad 
keyboard (and, yes, that's not really a situation you'd likely see with 
keyboards, but it /is/ very close to what you see with remotes--they 
have very different numbers of buttons and very different sets of 
buttons).  This is what it seems that people forget--not everyone is 
using the same remote they are, and remotes are not standardized to the 
same degree as keyboards.

Anyway, I think we all agree something needs to be done, and I do have a 
plan to make things very easy for the user and it will also handle the 
concerns expressed in this thread.  Now I just need to make the time to 
work on it (and the rest of my MythTV TODO list).

Mike


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