[mythtv] Proposed MythMusic Interface Improvements

[James Armstrong]

Eric A. Litman wrote:

>"Daniel C. Casimiro" dcasimiro at cox.net wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I am looking for some feedback on a number of improvements (IMHO) to the
>>MythMusic interface.  Please take a look at the screen shots found here:
>>http://members.cox.net/dcasimiro/index.html.
>>    
>>
>
>There are some interesting points to what you've put together here. It would
>be helpful if you could spend a bit of time creating mockups of the song
>display/selection UI, as - in practice - that's dramatically more important
>than an album selection widget.
>
>  
>
>>My biggest problem with the current interface is that it takes too long
>>for me to find music. To alleviate this problem, I would also like to
>>add the capability to filter albums/songs by letter. Again, the
>>autoplaylists would help in this area. I was thinking of adding a
>>spinner-type widget to implement the letter filtering, but an
>>autoplaylist interface may work better.
>>    
>>
>
>Any UI that moves away from hierarchical browsing and closer toward keyword
>or metadata searching would likely represent a significant improvement over
>the current mechanism for managing a large collection. While browsing is a
>familiar paradigm that should be included in any revised UI, its current
>form (both 0.14 and 0.15) diminishes in utility as the size and variety of a
>music collection grow - particularly for a keyboard-driven interface. This
>is a flaw in hierarchical information display in general, and not
>specifically an issue with either implementation.
>
>MythMusic really needs two modes of music selection: a browsing interface
>and a robust search interface.
>
>For straight browsing, the existing Program Finder interface is good
>starting point. It could be enhanced by adding the ability to re-sort the
>list (via the 'M' key) by Artist, Album, Genre, etc., or possibly adding
>spinboxes to additionally filter by genre, rating, etc.
>
>For a search interface (autoplaylist or otherwise), how about something akin
>to a Google-style keyword search (e.g. keyword, +keyword, -keyword,
>album:keyword, artist:keyword, genre:*keyword*, etc.) that displays results
>in a selectable list on the same screen as the search field. As keywords are
>added to or removed from the search (and the user runs/re-runs the search),
>the results list would update with the new result set. The user could move
>(via remote control arrows or keyboard tab key) between the search field and
>selectable box to switch focus and scroll/select items in the list, and
>perhaps even play directly from that screen. Pressing 'I' on any selected
>song could pop up extended information about that track. Again, variations
>on this theme could incorporate UI elements designed to minimize text input
>and mask complexity, such as spinboxes to filter by genre, rating, etc.
>Alternatively, the UI could be limited to search input box and results
>display, with modifier/grouping selection available on a popup via the 'M'
>key.
>
>As an interesting enhancement to this, the results list could try to group
>similar items, either automatically (e.g. hierarchical by artist or genre
>depending upon search criteria) or user specified. An example:
>
>    input>  "The Beatles" groupby:album
>
>    ( ) Help
>    ( ) Help/01-Help!.mp3
>    ( ) Help/02-The night before.mp3
>    ( ) Help/03 -You've got to hide your love away.mp3
>    ( ) Help/04-I need you.mp3
>    ( ) Help/05-Another girl.mp3
>    ( ) Help/06-You're going to lose that girl.mp3
>    ....
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style /1.
>Yesterday - Dandy.mp3
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style /2. Hey Jude -
>John Holt.mp3
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style /3. Come
>Together - The Israelites.mp3
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style /4.
>Something - Phyllis Dillon.mp3
>    ( ) Various Artists - Tribute to the Beatles Reggae Style /5. Let it
>Be - Nicky Thomas.mp3
>
>In this example the "( )" represents a selection box and the "/" between
>albums and songs represents a level of the result hierarchy. Genre or other
>groupings could be displayed similarly.
>
>Ideally, keyword searching would be flexible enough to match as broadly as
>possible by default (across filename, directory and ID3 metadata) , and
>modifiers should narrow the search. This would be particularly useful in a
>mixed collection, where not all songs are tagged or stored in a consistent
>directory structure. It also makes the song selection process accessible to
>the non-technical user who will never take the time to learn to input any
>query more complex than simple keywords, while remaining powerful for more
>adept users.
>
>Here is an example of something nominally similar that TiVo supports in
>their UI:
>
>http://www.pvrcompare.com/TivoTitleSearch.jpg
>(from http://www.pvrcompare.com/dtimages.html)
>
>Not right on the mark, but it gives an idea of how the elements of this
>might come together. It has the clear benefit of supporting users with and
>without a keyboard, and someone's already done a MythTV UI widget for that
>style of text input.  For MythMusic's variation on this theme, once again
>the existing Program Finder UI could be a model to follow, replacing the
>meta info display currently shown at the top of the screen with a textbox,
>spinboxes, etc. and incorporating the letter-by-letter widget shown in the
>screenshot above into the lower half of the screen. (consistency is a
>beautiful thing...)
>
>For reference, here's the current Program Finder UI:
>http://mythtv.sourceforge.net/mc/mpf3.png
>
>  
>
>>I found a cool website, named Slothdog's Amazing CD / Album Cover Finder
>><http://www.slothradio.com/covers> where you can download cover art. I
>>was hoping to design an interface that automatically pulls down art from
>>Slothdog.
>>    
>>
>
>Nice.
>
>I'd be happy to contribute to this effort if someone wants to take the lead.
>
>-Eric
>
>Related P.S.:
>
>While we're on the topic of autoplaylist creation and/or search input, I'll
>throw in my unsolicited vote that "%" be avoided as a user-visible wildcard
>character, despite it being the default SQL wildcard and requiring slightly
>less effort to parse before sending to the DB. Outside of the realm of SQL
>databases (and Vaxen), the majority of the electronic information seeking
>world uses regular expression or pseudo-regex matching with the good ol'
>asterisk/star/* character.
>
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>  
>
I'm glad you posted the link the the Tivo interfaces. I have made some 
feature requests, one being an on screen keyboard and made references to 
the Tivo. Someone asked me to post some screen shots. I took the 
pictures but have not posted them yet, now I don't need to. The Tivo has 
a lot of good screen layouts.