[mythtv-users] remote display from frontend

[Michael T. Dean]

On 10/27/2015 01:28 PM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Michael T. Dean  wrote:
>> If you really want command-line changes to your settings, you'd actually be
>> better off using the services API to change the setting then start
>> mythfrontend.
> In what way would I be better off?  It appears to be working perfectly
> for me for the last 10 years, and is far far simpler (and thus I
> consider it to be much more reliable).

You'd be better off because you're not actively disabling/breaking 
MythTV's mechanism for setting the window size.

>> Overrides are not meant to be used during normal usage.  They're meant to
>> override broken settings to allow you to get into settings and fix your
>> system.
> Your point of view.

No, this is based on the design of MythTV.  Settings are meant to be 
changeable.  Any override will actively override any changes.  By 
hard-coding in a window size, you will make it very confusing for anyone 
who ever tries to change the window size using the Appearance settings.

Now, if you're the only one using your system or if you forbid you 
family members from ever touching anything in settings, then perhaps no 
one has been confused on your system, yet.  But there have been a /lot/ 
of threads and even bug reports that said that various settings were not 
working when some user had a start command that overrode that setting.

If you really think you're better off using an override, feel free to 
continue, but when you suggest others do so, please make sure you also 
intercept all their future questions about, "Why won't my screen size 
change?" so no one else has to waste time with a lot of back and forth 
to figure out that the answer is due to a hard-coded -geometry override 
in some long-forgotten startup command line got from an e-mail long ago.

By specifying an override, you must know (and remember for as long as 
you're using that override) that the override is in place to understand 
why changes to that setting don't work.  To understand why a 
command-line override that actively ignores settings changes is a bad 
idea, search through the archives (and the Internet in general) to see 
all the discussions about specifying DPI in X and how changes don't work 
(due, in no small part, to some particular distro(s) hard-coding a -dpi 
override on the X server command line and, therefore, ignoring all 
configuration specified in the X config file).

> The entire concept that this should be a database setting is broken.
> It should be a per-window property.

It's not a "database setting."  It's a per-host setting that just 
happens to be stored in the database, rather than storing it in a file 
on the host.  How do you propose we make it a per-window property--and, 
I assume, that MythTV remembers it--without our storing it somewhere?  
We simply store settings in the database so that they're network 
accessible--meaning you can start up the frontend with that profile 
identifier on any system on your network (also making it easy to resume 
with the same settings after you upgrade your host OS or whatever).

Mike