Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Dev

New UI lib

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danielk at cuymedia

Jan 15, 2008, 7:21 PM

Post #1 of 6 (2307 views)
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New UI lib

Hey, I'm going to be in Mountain View on Saturday to talk with Pluto +
KDE devs about extending KDE's libplasma so it is usable as an OSD
renderer and all around sexy UI library. Pluto is contemplating writing
a multimedia authoring program akin to Adobe's flash multimedia
authoring program to use with libplasma + a GPLed UI library built on
top of it. The idea is to create something that mplayer, MythTV, freevo,
etc. could use to take care of compositing and v-sync on various
platforms.

See: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/UI3
(Basically a writeup of a discussion I had with Aaron Seigo of TrollTech
and Aaron Baalbergen of Pluto, transformed into business speak.)

Anyway, if your in or near Mountain View and have done any graphics
programming for MythTV or are a graphics designer, with flash authoring
experience or MythTV theming experience, and would like to attend (or
just want more info) please contact me.

If you are near Mountain View and have no relevant experience, I'm keen
on meeting any other MythTV developers in the flesh too. :)

-- Daniel

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mythtv at colin

Jan 17, 2008, 2:56 AM

Post #2 of 6 (2215 views)
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Re: New UI lib [In reply to]

Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> Hey, I'm going to be in Mountain View on Saturday to talk with Pluto +
> KDE devs about extending KDE's libplasma so it is usable as an OSD
> renderer and all around sexy UI library. Pluto is contemplating writing
> a multimedia authoring program akin to Adobe's flash multimedia
> authoring program to use with libplasma + a GPLed UI library built on
> top of it. The idea is to create something that mplayer, MythTV, freevo,
> etc. could use to take care of compositing and v-sync on various
> platforms.
>
> See: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/UI3
> (Basically a writeup of a discussion I had with Aaron Seigo of TrollTech
> and Aaron Baalbergen of Pluto, transformed into business speak.)
>
> Anyway, if your in or near Mountain View and have done any graphics
> programming for MythTV or are a graphics designer, with flash authoring
> experience or MythTV theming experience, and would like to attend (or
> just want more info) please contact me.
>
> If you are near Mountain View and have no relevant experience, I'm keen
> on meeting any other MythTV developers in the flesh too. :)

With this post and various other murmurings on this ML, it seems that
the UI stuff is finally coming to the fore among the core devs. This is
really nice and encouraging to see, so please keep up the good work.

I think it would be nice to be able to use plasma-like stuff in Myth so
what is suggested seems like a really good approach!

I only skimmed the article (I'm falling behind on my "interesting things
to read" list!!), but one comment jumped out at me: "The UI player will
first be developed for X86". I'm not sure if I'm just being paranoid but
seeing as PS3s are gaining popularity, I can see a Mythfrontend on PS3
being a fairly popular thing. I guess it's a while away yet, but I would
hope that PPC support (not to mention x86_64) would follow hot on the
heals of x86 support :) (forgive me if I've read that out of context).

Enjoy Mountain View Daniel. Never been or anywhere near myself but it
should be fun!

Take care

Col

--

+------------------------+
| Colin Guthrie |
+------------------------+
| myth(at)colin.guthr.ie |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+
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stuart at tase

Jan 17, 2008, 4:38 AM

Post #3 of 6 (2200 views)
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Re: New UI lib [In reply to]

On Wednesday 16 January 2008 03:21:56 Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> Hey, I'm going to be in Mountain View on Saturday to talk with Pluto +
> KDE devs about extending KDE's libplasma so it is usable as an OSD
> renderer and all around sexy UI library. Pluto is contemplating writing
> a multimedia authoring program akin to Adobe's flash multimedia
> authoring program to use with libplasma + a GPLed UI library built on
> top of it. The idea is to create something that mplayer, MythTV, freevo,
> etc. could use to take care of compositing and v-sync on various
> platforms.

Should I be bothering to convert everything to mythui? :/ I'm not sure from
the description whether this is something designed to replace mythui or
simply a painting/drawing layer which could be slipped into mythui as a
replacement for the QT/GL painters. Obviously I'm hoping the latter since I
really don't want to know that I've wasted my time.

I do have a number of things I like to suggest for a UI library but not so
much time to put them into a coherent, well argued case. In summary we need
as few widgets as possible but each one should be flexible, e.g. a single
list widget should be able to vertical, horizontal, diagonal and grid layouts
instead of having 4 different widgets; this gives power to the themers to
create radically different designs.

It obviously needs to be fully themable, every option you might pass to the
widget should be come from the theme. Behaviour, movement and style should
never be hardcoded.

I've met Aaron Seigo in person and know that's he's pretty keen on this KDE
Media Centre idea which I guess is the driving factor behind this new UI
library.

> Anyway, if your in or near Mountain View and have done any graphics
> programming for MythTV or are a graphics designer, with flash authoring
> experience or MythTV theming experience, and would like to attend (or
> just want more info) please contact me.
>
> If you are near Mountain View and have no relevant experience, I'm keen
> on meeting any other MythTV developers in the flesh too. :)

Sorry, little bit far to travel at short notice (not to mention pricy or being
treated like a criminal by US Border Authorities).
--
Stuart Morgan
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danielk at cuymedia

Jan 17, 2008, 6:30 AM

Post #4 of 6 (2206 views)
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Re: New UI lib [In reply to]

On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 12:38 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 January 2008 03:21:56 Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> > Hey, I'm going to be in Mountain View on Saturday to talk with Pluto +
> > KDE devs about extending KDE's libplasma so it is usable as an OSD
> > renderer and all around sexy UI library. Pluto is contemplating writing
> > a multimedia authoring program akin to Adobe's flash multimedia
> > authoring program to use with libplasma + a GPLed UI library built on
> > top of it. The idea is to create something that mplayer, MythTV, freevo,
> > etc. could use to take care of compositing and v-sync on various
> > platforms.
>
> Should I be bothering to convert everything to mythui? :/ I'm not sure from
> the description whether this is something designed to replace mythui or
> simply a painting/drawing layer which could be slipped into mythui as a
> replacement for the QT/GL painters. Obviously I'm hoping the latter since I
> really don't want to know that I've wasted my time.

Well the design is just getting started, but I do envision it as looking
a lot more like MythUI than our existing Qt based stuff. I think MythUI
will be the UI for MythTV 0.22.

> I do have a number of things I like to suggest for a UI library but not so
> much time to put them into a coherent, well argued case. In summary we need
> as few widgets as possible but each one should be flexible, e.g. a single
> list widget should be able to vertical, horizontal, diagonal and grid layouts
> instead of having 4 different widgets; this gives power to the themers to
> create radically different designs.

Yep, this is the idea for this library an idea behind MythUI too.

> It obviously needs to be fully themable, every option you might pass to the
> widget should be come from the theme. Behaviour, movement and style should
> never be hardcoded.

I've been looking at intermediary UI languages like OpenLaszlo.
OpenLaszlo has XML defining the UI + javascript to add functionality,
but it doesn't have the type of rendering primitives we need. I also
looked at the UI language that the freevo developers started working
on which was very javascript like with a powerful canvas object.
My leaning is to have XML defining the base UI so that this can be
easily generated and edited from a UI tool + a scripting language
for allowing more advanced behaviours. I would also like to be able
to insert libplasma applets anywhere within the layout.

> I've met Aaron Seigo in person and know that's he's pretty keen on this KDE
> Media Centre idea which I guess is the driving factor behind this new UI
> library.

He is someone I've been talking to. I'm still not sure if he can make
it on Saturday. If not, I may be able to pick his brain tomorrow when
he will be in Mountain View.

> Sorry, little bit far to travel at short notice (not to mention pricy or being
> treated like a criminal by US Border Authorities).

Yeah, I know. I just came back from a trip to Amsterdam a couple weeks
ago and they treat us 'citizens' coming back the same way. :(

-- Daniel

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l-case at peter-schade

Jan 22, 2008, 7:14 AM

Post #5 of 6 (2122 views)
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Re: New UI lib [In reply to]

Hello Daniel,
any news on this?

Bye Peter

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Kristjansson" <danielk[at]cuymedia.net>
To: "Development of mythtv" <mythtv-dev[at]mythtv.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:21 AM
Subject: [mythtv] New UI lib

Hey, I'm going to be in Mountain View on Saturday to talk with Pluto +
KDE devs about extending KDE's libplasma so it is usable as an OSD
renderer and all around sexy UI library. Pluto is contemplating writing
a multimedia authoring program akin to Adobe's flash multimedia
authoring program to use with libplasma + a GPLed UI library built on
top of it. The idea is to create something that mplayer, MythTV, freevo,
etc. could use to take care of compositing and v-sync on various
platforms.

See: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/UI3
(Basically a writeup of a discussion I had with Aaron Seigo of TrollTech
and Aaron Baalbergen of Pluto, transformed into business speak.)

Anyway, if your in or near Mountain View and have done any graphics
programming for MythTV or are a graphics designer, with flash authoring
experience or MythTV theming experience, and would like to attend (or
just want more info) please contact me.

If you are near Mountain View and have no relevant experience, I'm keen
on meeting any other MythTV developers in the flesh too. :)

-- Daniel

_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev[at]mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

_______________________________________________
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http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

danielk at cuymedia

Jan 22, 2008, 7:36 AM

Post #6 of 6 (2131 views)
Permalink

Re: New UI lib [In reply to]

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 16:14 +0100, Peter Schade wrote:
> Hello Daniel,
> any news on this?

Basically, the UI libs will be mostly written by the FOSS community
using libplasma + libqt as the base libraries. There was also a
definite contingent for allowing both plasma applets and flash objects.
KDE is planning to add support for gnash to plasma so that should be
possible, but the layout will probably be done using XML.

Assuming they can get the licensing right, Pluto will be contributing
the UI Designer. Pluto thinks it will be able to contribute 7 developers
to the UI Designer, plus maybe sponsor someone to coordinate the
various open source projects. Pluto wants the output of the designer
to be under free licenses (GPL + Creative Commons: Attribution-Share
Alike), and how to do that while still keeping the designer under an
OSS license is still an issue to be resolved. (Using a free license
for the designer is important for getting it included in distros.)

I think I'll create a mailing list and we'll have some basic design
documents going soon. Aaron.b is starting a page on the LinuxMCE wiki
as well.

-- Daniel

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