[mythtv-users] Customizing recording info

[R. G. Newbury]

On 2020-11-18 2:19 a.m., Stephen Worthington wrote:
>  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.


Since theme updates are not pushed, you need only worry if you pull the 
theme to get an update. I keep a copy of 'my' adjusted theme in my 
/home/mythtv folder and just apply the file to the updated myth setup as 
required. I am not sure that I even bothered to diff the new downloaded 
theme with the old version before applying my file. I have made a number 
of small adjustments to text placements in the theme to avoid details 
being cut off where the allowed space is actually too small.


Search in the recordings-ui.xml file for 'basetextarea'. You will find a 
section where various items are derived from this parent definition. You 
will see where they are placed in the visual field. (Note that you can 
inadvertently put stuff outside the visible box, which is *very* 
disconcerting when you are playing around.)

Your best bet is to add the info to 'description' in this section:

<textarea name="description" from="basetextarea">
<area>30,480,885,210</area>
<multiline>yes</multiline>
<scroll direction="vertical" />
<cutdown>no</cutdown>
<template>%"|SUBTITLE|" %%(|STARS|) %%DESCRIPTION%</template>
</textarea>

The area numbers are: horizontal offset, then vertical offset from top 
left of the screen, then horizontal extent, vertical depth from the 
offset point. 'description' is a large working space so you very well 
could get away with just adding '%%ORIGINALAIRDATE%' to the <template> line.

Geoff