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[RFC] Proposed settings rework

 

 

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robert.mcnamara at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:07 PM

Post #1 of 140 (2564 views)
Permalink
[RFC] Proposed settings rework

Hello MythTV Community,

There has been substantial discussion in the past several weeks,
culminating in a long dev channel discussion this morning, on how to
best improve MythTV usability and user experience. As most of you
know, Stuart Morgan has been hard at work improving Myth's User
Interface, and that work is ongoing. There are other elements
necessary to improving usability, including simplifying setup and
drastically simplifying the ocean of settings Myth users are presented
with. With this in mind, I drew up a tentative list of items that can
be replaced with sane defaults or removed outright. Please note that
I was (in my own words) "ruthless" in the creation of this list. Some
are more deserving of removal/rework than others, but all need some
thought.

Please feel free to peruse and comment on the list. Sometimes I note
why a setting is a bad idea, or what the default behavior ought to be.
A word of caution: Please keep the discussion civil. Sometimes,
what might be a slight usability hit to one person drastically
improves the experience for most others. Everyone is bound to see
some behaviors that they are used to changed, and everyone is bound to
disagree with some action taken. Try to keep in mind the new user's
perspective, as well as your own. Also bear in mind settings which
you toggled and fixed a problem might not necessarily be behaving as
they ought to be-- just because it fixed a problem for you doesn't
mean that we can't fix the core problem if it comes back.
Fundamentally, the setting needs to *make sense* and needs to be
unfixable without a setting to remain. Also, if a setting controls a
UI behavior so small/fiddly that it is more effort than it is worth,
it should go.

Try to keep conversations on-topic and specific, and we'll do our best
to explain/work things out.

Thanks,

Robert McNamara


GENERAL

Delete outright:

Aggressive Sound card Buffering (always false, we will fix any
playback issues that occur without it)



APPEARANCE

Delete outright:

All GUI offset/width spinboxes (respect screen wizard and -geometry
command line)
Use fixed window size (should always allow scaling when possible)
Fine Tune Font Size (should be theme controlled)
Use Transparent Boxes (now theme controlled)
Popup Background Shading Method (theme controlled/removed)
Use Line Edit Virtual Keyboard (true)

Replace w/ Sensible Defaults:

Theme cache size (2?) (size on filesystems--once cached themes hit
size, delete LRU?)
Merge Guide Language Prefs and UI Language Prefs
Date Formats by Locale?
Use Window Border (if fullscreen, no borders-- if not, draw borders)
Hide Mouse Cursor (display when moving, hide after ~5s idle?)


TV SETTINGS

Delete Outright:

- Program Guide-
Display Genre Colors (theme controlled)
Display Channel Icons (theme controlled)
-Playback-
Use video as timebase (causes more damage than help)
Show group summary (no longer used)
Display live preview of recordings (will be theme controlled)
Extra audio buffering (always true)
-Playback OSD-
OSD Font (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
Font Size (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
Default Caption Font Type (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
ALL the caption font settings (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
All the timeout settings (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
CC Font (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)

Replace w/ Sensible Defaults:

-Program Guide-
What to call unknown programs (Unknown)
What category to give unknown programs (Unknown)
Use select to change the channel in program guide (true, or at least
default to true if not removed)
-Playback-
Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)
Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple bookmark support)
Warn on no audio output (true)
Start in group list (true)
Use HW Acceleration for live recording preview (true)
Generate preview image from a bookmark if possible (true)
Time offset for thumbnail preview images (account for start early
(currently accounts for preroll/flaglist/cutlist) and use some
sensible default-- 180 seconds? or percentage of duration?)
Generate preview image remotely (true)
Default group filter to apply (set when changed in the PBB)
Always prompt for initial group filter (false)
Start from Watch List view (false)
Seek to exact frame (true)
Fast forward/rewind reposition amount (no idea, but this is WAY too
fiddly - Whatever the default is now should be fine)
Sticky Keys (if one wants this, just bind the alternate ffwd/rwd keys,
which do it by default)
Skip blank frames after commercials (false?)
Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)
-Playback OSD-
Always display closed captioning or subtitles (when turned on during
playback, set the default, as any television would)
Prefer EIA-708 over EIA-608 captions (true, allow toggle during
playback if both available and save last used)


MEDIA SETTINGS

Delete Outright:

-Music-
Audio device (should respect/use default audio device)
Show Song Ratings (themer controlled after conversion)
Show entire music tree (themer controlled after conversion)

Replace w/ Sensible Defaults:

-Music-
Automatically lookup CDs (true, but fail gracefully)
Enable CD Writing (true)
List as Shuffled (tooltip and name disagree-- "List songs on playback
screen in the order they will be played"--- true?)
Visualization List (all available/compiled)
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jppoet at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:18 PM

Post #2 of 140 (2502 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Robert McNamara
<robert.mcnamara [at] gmail> wrote:
> Hello MythTV Community,
>
<snip>
> Date Formats by Locale?

This would be tricky. Personally, I use YYYY-MM-DD DoW. Some people
like the year to display, some don't. Some like the Day-of-week to
show, some don't.

> Show group summary (no longer used)

Huh? I still use it with metallurgy. This is the setting that shows
the number of shows in the group, if in the group selector, right?

> Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)

As the long as the default is false, I am fine with this. ;-)

> Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple bookmark support)

What if I want to start watching a show in the same place every time?


John
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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richard.e.morton at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:20 PM

Post #3 of 140 (2488 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

Hi,

Largely these seem fine, a couple of things from a UK user perspective
that may be as valid in the rest of the world. I have commented below
in the relevant section

> -Playback-
> Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)
> Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple bookmark support)
> Warn on no audio output (true)
> Start in group list (true)
> Use HW Acceleration for live recording preview (true)
> Generate preview image from a bookmark if possible (true)
> Time offset for thumbnail preview images (account for start early
> (currently accounts for preroll/flaglist/cutlist) and use some
> sensible default-- 180 seconds?  or percentage of duration?)
> Generate preview image remotely (true)
> Default group filter to apply (set when changed in the PBB)
> Always prompt for initial group filter (false)
> Start from Watch List view (false)
- not sure what the above does!

> Seek to exact frame (true)
> Fast forward/rewind reposition amount (no idea, but this is WAY too
> fiddly - Whatever the default is now should be fine)
> Sticky Keys (if one wants this, just bind the alternate ffwd/rwd keys,
> which do it by default)
shouldnt the key mapping be updated to this as default?

> Skip blank frames after commercials (false?)
totall agree with this.

> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)
We tend to have less frequent longer advert breaks so a default of 5
minutes for max advert skip tends to be too short, however 6 minutes
is nearly always adequate in my experience.


Thanks And Regards,

Richard Morton

www.pidgin.im - MSN & Yahoo Messenger and many great features but
without adverts
www.kubuntu.com - 9.10 a free operating system thats pretty & damn good.
www.mythtv.org - Home media system
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 1:24 PM

Post #4 of 140 (2486 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 04:20 PM, Richard Morton wrote:
>> Sticky Keys (if one wants this, just bind the alternate ffwd/rwd keys,
>> which do it by default)
>>
> shouldnt the key mapping be updated to this as default?

My patch removes the setting and updates the keybindings in the DB for
the user based on the value of the Sticky Keys setting.

Mike
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robert.mcnamara at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:25 PM

Post #5 of 140 (2499 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Richard Morton
<richard.e.morton [at] gmail> wrote:
>> Start from Watch List view (false)
>  - not sure what the above does!
>

If the "Watch List" is enabled, then the first group selected in the
Watch Recording screen is that one. The essence of a fiddly setting.
:)


>> Sticky Keys (if one wants this, just bind the alternate ffwd/rwd keys,
>> which do it by default)
> shouldnt the key mapping be updated to this as default?
>

Yes, and in fact one of the devs has volunteered to write a DB update
patch that sets the keybindings properly based on the user's current
setup.

>
>> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)
> We tend to have less frequent longer advert breaks so a default of 5
> minutes for max advert skip tends to be too short, however 6 minutes
> is nearly always adequate in my experience.

Yeah, six seems enough, and a couple 30 second skips after that in the
rare instances it would not be.

Robert
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hobbes1069 at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:34 PM

Post #6 of 140 (2500 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Robert McNamara
<robert.mcnamara [at] gmail> wrote:
> MEDIA SETTINGS
>
> Delete Outright:
>
> -Music-
> Audio device (should respect/use default audio device)

The only problem I can think of with this one is if you NEED to use a
different device. I may not understand this topic completely so tell
me if I'm full of it.

I use passthrough for all of my TV recordings (using HDHR ATSC
recordings only) so I want everything to go out over ALSA:spdif. In my
case my receiver supports 44.1kHz audio but if it did not then
wouldn't I need a separate audio device so I could resample to 48kHz?

If this is truly a problem then one solution may to have two devices
in the main setup, one for PCM sources and one for passthrough
sources.

Thanks,

Richard
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eric at lisaneric

Nov 3, 2009, 1:35 PM

Post #7 of 140 (2499 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Robert McNamara
<robert.mcnamara [at] gmail> wrote:
> Hide Mouse Cursor (display when moving, hide after ~5s idle?)

This should be conditional on being full screen (the same as the
window borders). When running mythfrontend in a window, I really
don't want the cursor to be hidden.

Eric
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robert.mcnamara at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 1:36 PM

Post #8 of 140 (2489 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Richard Shaw <hobbes1069 [at] gmail> wrote:
>
> If this is truly a problem then one solution may to have two devices
> in the main setup, one for PCM sources and one for passthrough
> sources.

Indeed, and we have exactly that in the general setup.

Robert
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cpinkham at bc2va

Nov 3, 2009, 2:14 PM

Post #9 of 140 (2487 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

* On Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 02:18:14PM -0700, John P Poet wrote:
> > Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple bookmark support)
>
> What if I want to start watching a show in the same place every time?

I agree. I normally don't want my bookmark wiped out until I wipe it out.
Especially when there's a playback issue with ffmpeg crashing trying to
decode a partially corrupt file and I keep having to go back in and
skipping over the bad part.

--
Chris
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jakeisawake at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 2:23 PM

Post #10 of 140 (2472 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

>>> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)
>> We tend to have less frequent longer advert breaks so a default of 5
>> minutes for max advert skip tends to be too short, however 6 minutes
>> is nearly always adequate in my experience.
>
> Yeah, six seems enough, and a couple 30 second skips after that in the
> rare instances it would not be.
>
> Robert

currently i have my maximum commercial skip set at 7 minutes, i have
seen a valid commercial break of over 6 minutes (MTV especially) but
nothing over 7.

i like the idea of getting rid of a bunch of settings in general but
maybe we could compromise. i know there has been discussion in the
past of having a basic view and an advanced view...maybe that could
work better? though probably more work.

what does everyone else think? i guess once we start removing
settings we'll really hear what settings people like if they get
removed ;)
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jerome at supernet

Nov 3, 2009, 2:25 PM

Post #11 of 140 (2470 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tuesday 03 November 2009, Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara [at] gmail>
wrote:
>
> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)

It took me 2.5 years to find this setting and change it to a
more-reasonable 360 seconds (6 minutes), which I think would be a much
better default than 1 hour.

--
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 2:29 PM

Post #12 of 140 (2467 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 05:14 PM, Chris Pinkham wrote:
> * On Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 02:18:14PM -0700, John P Poet wrote:
>
>>> Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple bookmark support)
>>>
>> What if I want to start watching a show in the same place every time?
>>
> I agree. I normally don't want my bookmark wiped out until I wipe it out.
> Especially when there's a playback issue with ffmpeg crashing trying to
> decode a partially corrupt file and I keep having to go back in and
> skipping over the bad part.
>

So, if we have:

> Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)

(from the original post), then default "Clear bookmark on playback" to
false. Users can manually clear them if desired and/or reset them on
exit and/or use the choice to start from beginning/bookmark in the INFO
menu.

Mike
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cpinkham at bc2va

Nov 3, 2009, 2:42 PM

Post #13 of 140 (2470 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

* On Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 05:29:22PM -0500, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> So, if we have:
>
> >Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)
>
> (from the original post), then default "Clear bookmark on playback" to
> false. Users can manually clear them if desired and/or reset them on
> exit and/or use the choice to start from beginning/bookmark in the INFO
> menu.

Yes, I prefer 'alternate clear/save' ON and 'clear on playback' OFF.
If someone wants to ignore the bookmark when starting playback, they can
do so via the MENU. If they want to clear, it's just one extra button
press when they start playback or when they want to set a new bookmark.

One option would be to make the 'alternate' intelligent sort of like
the cutlist editor. If you hit bookmark w/in X seconds of the existing
bookmark, it clears. If you're outside of that X-second window, then
the bookmark value is set to the new position.

--
Chris
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mythtv at hotblack

Nov 3, 2009, 2:47 PM

Post #14 of 140 (2474 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 4/11/09 11:29 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 11/03/2009 05:14 PM, Chris Pinkham wrote:
>> * On Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 02:18:14PM -0700, John P Poet wrote:
>>>> Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple
>>>> bookmark support)
>>> What if I want to start watching a show in the same place every time?
>> I agree. I normally don't want my bookmark wiped out until I wipe it out.
>> Especially when there's a playback issue with ffmpeg crashing trying to
>> decode a partially corrupt file and I keep having to go back in and
>> skipping over the bad part.
>
> So, if we have:
>
>> Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)
>
> (from the original post), then default "Clear bookmark on playback" to
> false. Users can manually clear them if desired and/or reset them on
> exit and/or use the choice to start from beginning/bookmark in the INFO
> menu.
>
> Mike

I'd second that, as those are the settings that we settled on in our
household.

- Wade
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nick.rout at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 2:49 PM

Post #15 of 140 (2473 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Robert McNamara
<robert.mcnamara [at] gmail> wrote:
> Hello MythTV Community,
>
> There has been substantial discussion in the past several weeks,
> culminating in a long dev channel discussion this morning, on how to
> best improve MythTV usability and user experience.  As most of you
> know, Stuart Morgan has been hard at work improving Myth's User
> Interface, and that work is ongoing.  There are other elements
> necessary to improving usability, including simplifying setup and
> drastically simplifying the ocean of settings Myth users are presented
> with.

A couple of comments:

(1) it amused me to see a similar thread on the XBMC forums lately,
people wanting to drastically reduce the configuration options in
XBMC. The reason it amused me is that XBMC seems to have a pittance of
setup options compared to mythtv, yet people still want them reduced.

(2) make the settings more accessible. From each screen/plugin add a
context menu button to go straight to the config options for that
screen. (presently its escape back to main menu, forward through
several setup menus, make the changes then escape back out to main
menu and all the way back to your screen. My suggestion is not only
more user friendly in terms of button presses, but may save those
endless posts asking "where is the settings option for foobar" - the
answer will become "from the foobar screen hit [info] and choose
[settings]"
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robert.mcnamara at gmail

Nov 3, 2009, 2:51 PM

Post #16 of 140 (2469 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Nick Rout <nick.rout [at] gmail> wrote:
> (2) make the settings more accessible. From each screen/plugin add a
> context menu button to go straight to the config options for that
> screen. (presently its escape back to main menu, forward through
> several setup menus, make the changes then escape back out to main
> menu and all the way back to your screen. My suggestion is not only
> more user friendly in terms of button presses, but may save those
> endless posts asking "where is the settings option for foobar" - the
> answer will become "from the foobar screen hit [info] and choose
> [settings]"

I completely agree on this and that is the aim. Was just discussing
this yesterday but we want to make sure the way we do it is
consistent. It's likely to be something you will see. I've done some
work MythUI'ing and simplifying MythVideo setting this last week and
once get them all pared down and bite sized my goal is to adopt
whatver plugin-accessible method of settings we decide on.

Robert

Robert
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 2:51 PM

Post #17 of 140 (2476 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 05:42 PM, Chris Pinkham wrote:
> * On Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 05:29:22PM -0500, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
>> So, if we have:
>>
>>> Alternate clear and save bookmark (true)
>>>
>> (from the original post), then default "Clear bookmark on playback" to
>> false. Users can manually clear them if desired and/or reset them on
>> exit and/or use the choice to start from beginning/bookmark in the INFO
>> menu.
>>
> Yes, I prefer 'alternate clear/save' ON and 'clear on playback' OFF.
> If someone wants to ignore the bookmark when starting playback, they can
> do so via the MENU. If they want to clear, it's just one extra button
> press when they start playback or when they want to set a new bookmark.
>
> One option would be to make the 'alternate' intelligent sort of like
> the cutlist editor. If you hit bookmark w/in X seconds of the existing
> bookmark, it clears. If you're outside of that X-second window, then
> the bookmark value is set to the new position.

That's not a bad idea. The hard part would be finding the bookmark to
clear it (for those of us who don't map K/JUMPBKMRK on the remote--I'm
guessing somewhere in north of 90% of users for that one :).

I do plan to add multiple bookmark support***, and part of doing so will
be a UI for selecting bookmarks, so adding a "bookmark editor" would
likely be a trivial addition at that point.

Mike

***Where, actually, 99% of the required code is already there/done by
others (seemingly designed to allow such an enhancement)--it just needs
a couple modifications and a UI.
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ylee at pobox

Nov 3, 2009, 3:02 PM

Post #18 of 140 (2469 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

John P Poet <jppoet [at] gmail> says:
> > Date Formats by Locale?
>
> This would be tricky. Personally, I use YYYY-MM-DD DoW. Some people
> like the year to display, some don't. Some like the Day-of-week to
> show, some don't.

Agreed. If this were Windows or OS X, mythfrontend could depend on the
operating system's defaults, but that won't apply for Unix as not
everyone will be running under KDE or Gnome.

> > Clear bookmark on playback (true) (false once we have multiple
> > bookmark support)
>
> What if I want to start watching a show in the same place every time?

Wouldn't you be better off just manually setting cutmarks?

--
Frontend/backend: P4 3.0GHz, 1.5TB software RAID 5 array
Backend: Quad-core Xeon 1.6GHz, 6.6TB sw RAID 6
Video inputs: Four high-definition over FireWire/OTA
Accessories: 47" 1080p LCD, 5.1 digital, and MX-600
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daworm at comcast

Nov 3, 2009, 3:25 PM

Post #19 of 140 (2478 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

Jake wrote:
> i like the idea of getting rid of a bunch of settings in general but
> maybe we could compromise. i know there has been discussion in the
> past of having a basic view and an advanced view...maybe that could
> work better? though probably more work.
>
This to me seems more likely to please more people. Some people just
can't stop fiddling, and might be vociferous if their favorite tweaks
went away totally. Move all of the rarely used fields to an "advanced"
screen, and make that launch off of a button from the basic screen, and
you'll satisfy the people who don't want to wade through a bunch of
settings they never need, and the ones who want to change every little
thing.

Of course, there were a few on that list that do need to go away
entirely, as well.

Jeff.
--
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not smoking 35,245.16 cigarettes.
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azmail at thezawackis

Nov 3, 2009, 3:40 PM

Post #20 of 140 (2469 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 04:07 PM, Robert McNamara wrote:
> TV SETTINGS
>
> - Program Guide-
> Display Genre Colors (theme controlled)
> Display Channel Icons (theme controlled)
> Display live preview of recordings (will be theme controlled)

Many things are listed as theme controlled. Does this imply that themes
may have additional configuration screens as well? In particular, the
first thing I do is disable the live preview as I find it distracting...
But theme controlled seems to imply that either themes will have
configuration (which I truly doubt) or that quite a few configuration
options will be decided by the theme author and not be changed...

> Always display closed captioning or subtitles (when turned on during
> playback, set the default, as any television would)
> Prefer EIA-708 over EIA-608 captions (true, allow toggle during
> playback if both available and save last used)

I'm not sure I understand what this means... I have the always display
set to true. Does this mean that if I am watching a show, and then turn
on captions, it stays on all of the time for all future recordings until
I turn it off again? This would work just fine, but I am just making
sure we understand these couple of settings.

Thanks,
Anthony
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 3:41 PM

Post #21 of 140 (2471 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 06:25 PM, Jeff Wormsley wrote:
> This to me seems more likely to please more people. Some people just
> can't stop fiddling, and might be vociferous if their favorite tweaks
> went away totally. Move all of the rarely used fields to an
> "advanced" screen, and make that launch off of a button from the basic
> screen, and you'll satisfy the people who don't want to wade through a
> bunch of settings they never need, and the ones who want to change
> every little thing.

But not the developers who have to test patches with every combination
of 10 different settings which affect the specific patch.

Just my opinion.

Mike
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 3:43 PM

Post #22 of 140 (2471 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 06:40 PM, Anthony Zawacki wrote:
> On 11/03/2009 04:07 PM, Robert McNamara wrote:
>> TV SETTINGS
>>
>> - Program Guide-
>> Display Genre Colors (theme controlled)
>> Display Channel Icons (theme controlled)
>> Display live preview of recordings (will be theme controlled)
>
> Many things are listed as theme controlled. Does this imply that
> themes may have additional configuration screens as well? In
> particular, the first thing I do is disable the live preview as I find
> it distracting... But theme controlled seems to imply that either
> themes will have configuration (which I truly doubt) or that quite a
> few configuration options will be decided by the theme author and not
> be changed...

Decided by the theme author. Changed by editing theme XML or changing
themes.

>> Always display closed captioning or subtitles (when turned on during
>> playback, set the default, as any television would)
>> Prefer EIA-708 over EIA-608 captions (true, allow toggle during
>> playback if both available and save last used)
>
> I'm not sure I understand what this means... I have the always
> display set to true. Does this mean that if I am watching a show, and
> then turn on captions, it stays on all of the time for all future
> recordings until I turn it off again? This would work just fine, but
> I am just making sure we understand these couple of settings.

Yep.

Mike
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dibblah.allan.stirling at googlemail

Nov 3, 2009, 4:21 PM

Post #23 of 140 (2448 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

Robert McNamara wrote:
> <wise words>
>
<snip>

I would like to comment further on this, since it is easy to
misunderstand the intent with these changes.

The primary goal here is not just freeing up the 12 or so
pages of confusing settings that the end-user is presented
with for each "configuration" section.

Each setting has behind it thousands of lines of code - A
majority of which is run by only a few individuals. If a
setting is no longer exposed in the "default"
user-interface, that code still exists, but is used by even
fewer people. It is also not necessarily as well maintained
as the rest of the commonly used code.

The repercussion of this is that with the Myth codebase as
it is currently, it's essentially a crapshoot if a developer
can reproduce an end-user's issues. Add to that that it's
impossible to fully test a change given the time available.

More settings means more code complexity. More code
complexity means more bugs.

All of this adds up to the fact that just punting the
settings off to an "advanced" section, or (shudder) a
database-only setting is not actually helping bring Myth
forward in either usability or reliability metrics.

Cheers,

Allan.
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mythtv at rodsbooks

Nov 3, 2009, 4:27 PM

Post #24 of 140 (2449 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On Tuesday 03 November 2009 04:07:22 pm Robert McNamara wrote:
>
> Fine Tune Font Size (should be theme controlled)

This is one I wouldn't want to see go away. It's been quite a while since I
set up my Myth box, but I distinctly recall having to fine-tune the font
sizes to get something that was both legible and small enough to fit enough
text in the menus, dialogs, etc. for my screen resolution, screen size, and
viewing distance. Because these three factors all vary quite a bit from one
setup to another, I find it hard to believe that theme authors could possibly
come up with something to please everybody. The alternative for a theme
author would be to come out with several variants, which would be a pain for
everybody. As a user, I'd hate to use a theme just because it happens to use
the right font size even when I think it's otherwise ugly, or to use a theme
with illegibly-small or ridiculously-large fonts because I think it's
otherwise attractive.

> Display live preview of recordings (will be theme controlled)

This is another item that really does vary a lot from one installation to
another. I found the previews distracting, and worse, they slowed things down
enough that I didn't like them. (They made the UI sluggish.) This performance
degradation is likely to be worse on systems with weaker CPUs, so it's
perfectly reasonable for a person to want to disable live previews in favor
of static or no previews.

> OSD Font (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
> Font Size (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
> Default Caption Font Type (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
> ALL the caption font settings (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)

See above. It might be reasonable to fold these settings up with general UI
font settings, though, if that's convenient.

> Maximum commercial skip (3600, the default)

If the default really is 3600 (not 360), then that's WAY too long. Aside from
infomercials (and if you've knowingly recorded one of them, you presumably
WANT to watch it), commercials I've seen rarely exceed 5 minutes, although
they occasionally go up to 6 minutes. I don't know if there's a setting for
this that I've overlooked (or set and forgotten), but on my system, it
refuses to skip anything when it sees a too-long commercial, so if you set a
fixed maximum commercial length, you might want to consider setting it so
that it skips up to that fixed maximum (assuming it's reasonable -- in the
5-7 minute range, say) when it detects a longer commercial. That way, if the
commercial really is ridiculously long, you'll at least have skipped a good
chunk of it, and another press of the commercial-skip button should take up
the slack. In fact, if you set it that way, using a relatively short length
(4 or 5 minutes) might make sense, since pressing the commercial-skip button
a second time is less of an inconvenience than rewinding to find where the
commercial actually ended.

Nick Rout wrote:

> (2) make the settings more accessible. From each screen/plugin add a
> context menu button to go straight to the config options for that
> screen. (presently its escape back to main menu, forward through
> several setup menus, make the changes then escape back out to main
> menu and all the way back to your screen. My suggestion is not only
> more user friendly in terms of button presses, but may save those
> endless posts asking "where is the settings option for foobar" - the
> answer will become "from the foobar screen hit [info] and choose
> [settings]"

This is an excellent suggestion. I've wasted more time than I care to
contemplate moving back and forth between the recordings list and the plaback
settings options pages when trying to fine-tune my playback settings.

--
Rod Smith
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Nov 3, 2009, 4:49 PM

Post #25 of 140 (2457 views)
Permalink
Re: [RFC] Proposed settings rework [In reply to]

On 11/03/2009 07:27 PM, Rod Smith wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 November 2009 04:07:22 pm Robert McNamara wrote:
>
>> Fine Tune Font Size (should be theme controlled)
>>
> This is one I wouldn't want to see go away. It's been quite a while since I
> set up my Myth box, but I distinctly recall having to fine-tune the font
> sizes to get something that was both legible and small enough to fit enough
> text in the menus, dialogs, etc. for my screen resolution, screen size, and
> viewing distance.

This setting applies /only/ to Qt/unthemed sections of MythTV (it's
actually called, "QtFonTweak," which was both descriptive of its purpose
and a fun little slurred-together name). As soon as the settings/setup
is mythui'ed, the setting will be completely unused in the code.

Change the value to the the 2 limits and you'll see absolutely no
difference in menus or any themed portion of Myth.

>> Display live preview of recordings (will be theme controlled)
>>
> This is another item that really does vary a lot from one installation to
> another. I found the previews distracting, and worse, they slowed things down
> enough that I didn't like them. (They made the UI sluggish.) This performance
> degradation is likely to be worse on systems with weaker CPUs, so it's
> perfectly reasonable for a person to want to disable live previews in favor
> of static or no previews.
>

sed -i -e '/<livepreview/d' CPUHungryTheme/*.xml

(making up tag names, but you get the point--just edit the theme if you
must use a theme whose author likes live preview, but you don't want it)

>> OSD Font (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
>> Font Size (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
>> Default Caption Font Type (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
>> ALL the caption font settings (themer controlled upon MythUI conversion)
>>
> See above. It might be reasonable to fold these settings up with general UI
> font settings, though, if that's convenient.
>

Since the font face and size determines the amount of space required to
present the text, it makes a lot of sense to make these theme
controlled. If not, then users will see the themes as broken when "the
text doesn't fit" or "there's all sorts of wasted space." This is the
same reason that the UI theme now handle /all/ font face and sizing
selection--because you can't expect to just stuff any old font/size in
there and have everything fit properly.

Even the <size:small> and <size:big> were removed from the UI themes,
and, therefore, the setting allowing users to select default, small, or
big fonts was removed. Before they were removed, themers had to write
the theme with one size, then go back through and re-test/adjust all
100+ screens in the theme 2 more times for the other 2 sizes. Because
of the amount of work this was, none of the themes really did this
properly (and many left out one or both of <size:small> and
<size:big>--so the settings seemed to be "broken" when in fact the
themes were incomplete). Generally the themes all worked well on one
size and not on others (basically, they worked well on the setting the
author specified)--and to make matters worse, the one size that worked
was different with different themes.

Those same <size:small> and <size:big> tags will also be removed from
the OSD themes when the OSD is converted to mythui because it's just not
feasible to expect themers to redo their theme 3 times. It's actually
easier for someone to take a (much-simplified because of the lack of
settings) theme and modify it for their particular desires (and only
have to test the changes once--versus 3 different times). Then, if they
feel it warrants redistribution, they can make their modified version
available.

> Nick Rout wrote:
>
>> (2) make the settings more accessible. From each screen/plugin add a
>> context menu button to go straight to the config options for that
>> screen. (presently its escape back to main menu, forward through
>> several setup menus, make the changes then escape back out to main
>> menu and all the way back to your screen. My suggestion is not only
>> more user friendly in terms of button presses, but may save those
>> endless posts asking "where is the settings option for foobar" - the
>> answer will become "from the foobar screen hit [info] and choose
>> [settings]"
>>
>
> This is an excellent suggestion. I've wasted more time than I care to
> contemplate moving back and forth between the recordings list and the plaback
> settings options pages when trying to fine-tune my playback settings.

Agreed, and as Robert mentioned, this is an eventual goal--but one made
much easier to accomplish once we get rid of some of the cruft. (After
all, would you really want a 12-screen "context settings" for TV Playback?)

Mike
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