[mythtv-users] Mythtv .19 live watching
chris at cpr.homelinux.net
chris at cpr.homelinux.net
Fri Jul 14 12:39:11 UTC 2006
On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 03:40:26PM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> Interesting how the guy preaching about how lazy the MythTV developers
> are doesn't have time to fix any problems. I guess you're just saying
> your time is more valuable than Isaac's, et. al, and they should get
> right on fixing this problem for you.
Design and coding are separate tasks, and I happen to believe that
the time I take to point out design flaws and propose solutions is
just as valuable as the time you take to write code, particularly
if proper design now saves you from having to waste a year
refactoring again. Most successful software companies will tell
you that coders are usually too close to the problem to see the
right solution. That's why they split the project into the "design
team" and "implimentation team". I've worked on both. Now my
employer pays me to advise the design teams (for a project that
involves recording vast quantities of non-television video, no
less).
I generally like MythTV and want to see it succeed and improve, and
am helping in the best way I can right now. If and when I have
time to write code for MythTV you'll be the first to know.
In any case, when someone challenges your design, assigning them to
the "implimentation team" to shut them up is not helpful.
> Not going to make a comment about the importance of 150MiB (installed
> size of X and less than 10 minutes of a recording at 2000kbps or
> 5min at 4000kbps or 2.5min at 6000kbps) to a backend. Not going to comment on
> the backend's not needing a monitor (or even needing to run an X
> server). Not going to comment on the fact that Qt3 makes installation
> of X mandatory, anyway, and that Myth requires Qt3.
Not going to comment on the fact that the size of X11 is not the
origin of my complaint. Not going to comment on the fact that the
backend could have avoided using QT3 and dragging a lot of
dependencies into the mix which only serve to make upgrades
painfully complicated and sometimes impossible. Not going to
comment on the fact that you're either missing or avoiding my
point, which is that a daemon which produces no visible output
shouldn't be ham-strung by a GUI-only installer. GUI installers
are usually implimented as optional front-ends to a text-based
installer for a reason.
> I have. And, while I generally respect ESR's opinions, I feel that
> essay is just plain wrong. He talks about the usability of CUPS based
> on the GUI configuration tools provided by Fedora Core (not by CUPS).
A point which he addressed in his follow-up article a month later.
He wasn't blaming the CUPS team for a bad product, but showing how
a bad design (GUI or otherwise) can drag a product down. In that
specific case it may have been a RedHat add-on that caused the
problem, but assigning blame or disputing details at the expense of
ignoring the big picture is a waste of time. Even the CUPS team
generally agreed with his observations.
> Encoding additional meaning into priority? Yeah. That's intuitive.
> From ESR's essay that you quoted, "Rule 1 of writing software for
> nontechnical users is this: if they have to read documentation to use it
> you designed it wrong."
The trick is to hide the technical bits from the user so that the
priority levels and their effects can be observed without requiring
training. A "discoverable" interface might simply insert breaks in
the priority listing that say something like "shows below this line
will be deleted if required", etc. The actual values and their
meanings don't have to be hard coded or even shown. A user could
change the priority of a show up or down so that it not only
reflected their relative values but was also contained in the
section of the list that meets their needs. Given that you already
have so many variables involved in the prioritization process,
hiding the details from Aunt Tillie will be rather hard, though.
She's already unable to use Myth without training.
Of course there are solutions. If I thought I'd get a reply other
than "I don't care" I'd propose some.
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