[mythtv-users] Customizing recording info

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Wed Nov 18 07:19:52 UTC 2020


On Tue, 17 Nov 2020 20:28:24 -0700, you wrote:

>I am using the MythCenter theme, which I like except I want the brief
>program info in the recordings listing  to include original air date.  This
>is available in the detailed info (displayed with the "i" key), but I want
>it shown in the basic listing.
>
>Is it feasible to customize this?  I saw the wiki page about customizing
>themes but it applied to menus, not this granular of a change.  If it is
>feasible can anyone point me in the right direction?

It looks like it should be possible.  You would need to make a copy of
the /usr/share/mythtv/themes/MythCentre-wide directory under:

$HOME/.mythtv/themes

Then rename the theme.  I call mine MythCenter-wide-JSW.  So rename
the directory, and then in its themeinfo.xml file, also change the
<name> field.  Then find where the recordings listings are done in the
recordings-ui.xml file.  If you search for filesize_str that is where
that sort of data is displayed.  Somewhere around there try adding a
new field to display the original airdate.  You may need to adjust the
locations and widths of other fields to allow this.  Look here:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Recordings-ui.xml

for the things you can put in recordings-ui.xml.  There seem to be two
options for what you want: originalairdate or shortoriginalairdate.

Be aware that there is no mechanism to keep custom themes up to date.
You need to check the original theme directory occasionally and see if
anything has changed.  I find the easiest way to do that is to keep a
copy of the original theme directory somewhere else (eg under
$HOME/.mythtv/themes as MythCentre-wide-original) and just do a diff
between the two copies.  You can also just check the timestamps in the
original theme directory.  When things change, you need to propagate
those changes to your custom version.  I keep meaning to automate the
diff process so that it will be done from cron.daily and email me when
it sees a change, but I have not got around to doing that yet.


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