Menu theme development guide
Contents
Introduction
Menu themes allow the user to customize where certain myth features are located. By creating a customized menu theme, users can tailor MythTV to there own usage. The goal of this guide is to familiarize users with the menu's XML format and to create a comprehensive list of actions that will allow the user to invoke plugins and other menus. This document assumes that mythtv is installed in the "/usr" directory. If it is installed in the "/usr/local" directory, substitute everywhere that says "/usr/" with "/usr/local/". This document is currently incomplete.
Overview
Menu themes are a series of XML documents. The XML document defines what "buttons" are shown on each menu. Each XML document describes one menu.
First Step
The first step is to create a directory to hold the menu's XML document. If unsure, a good place is in the home folder. The directory can be called anything that is not already a theme of any kind. To find out what not to call the menu theme, use the following command in a terminal:
$ ls /usr/share/mythtv/themes
Type the following to create a directory for a menutheme in "~/mymenuthemes/mymenu".
$ cd ~ $ mkdir mymenuthemes $ cd mymenuthemes $ mkdir mymenu $ cd mymenu
It is generally a good idea to sketch out how the new menu is to be laid out. This will decrease the chance of error as well as speed up the development process.
Creating a Main Menu
To create the main menu, create a new document called "mainmenu.xml" For example, this command can be typed at the terminal:
$ gedit mainmenu.xml
The first line of the document will always be
<mythmenu name="MAIN">
After the mythmenu tag, one or more button tags will define the buttons shown on the screen. Finally, the document will end with
</mythmenu>
Buttons
A button defines what text appears on the screen and what action will be taken when the user selects the button.
<button> <type>SOME_TYPE</type> <text>My Text</text> <text lang="XX">My Text in XX</text> <action>SOME_TYPE_ACTION</action> <depends>myplugin</depends> </button>
Below is a description of each tag
- <type> This tag defines what kind of button this is. This will determine what picture is shown when the button is highlighted. A list of known types can be found in Appendix A: Types.
- <text> The default text that appears on the screen. This is generally written in English.
- <text lang="XX"> Text that will appear if the user's local is XX. There may be more than one of these tags
- <action> The action that will result when the user selects the button. A complete list of known actions can be found in Appendix B: Actions
- <depends> Indicates that the button will only be shown if the indicated plugin is installed
Appendix A: Types
Appendix B: Actions
TV actions
- TV_STATUS - Status of the myth backend
- TV_WATCH_RECORDING - Go to the watch recording screen
- TV_WATCH_LIVE - Watch live TV
- TV_SET_RECPRIORITIES - View/Set Recording Priorities
- TV_FIX_CONFLICTS - Show upcoming recordings and conflicts
- TV_DELETE - Go to delete recordings screen
- TV_PREVIOUS - Show previously recorded shows
- TV_SCHEDULE - Schedule a recording
- TV_PROGFIND - Go to program finder
- TV_MANUAL - Manually set recording info
- TV_CUSTOM_RECORD - Allow user to set a custom recording
- TV_MANUALSCHEDULE -
- TV_SEARCH_TITLE
- TV_SEARCH_KEYWORD
- TV_SEARCH_PEOPLE
- TV_SEARCH_POWER
- TV_SEARCH_NEW
- TV_SEARCH_MOVIE
- TV_SEARCH_CATEGORY
- TV_SEARCH_CHANNEL
- TV_SEARCH_TIME
Settings actions
Please note the space between SETTINGS and it's argument
- SETTINGS MAINGENERAL
- SETTINGS APPEARANCE
- SETTINGS XBOXSETTINGS
- SETTINGS GENERALRECPRIORITIES
- SETTINGS CHANNELRECPRIORITIES
- SETTINGS EPG
- SETTINGS PLAYBACK
- SETTINGS RECORDING
MythDVD actions
- DVD_PLAY - Watch DVD
- DVD_SETTINGS_GENERAL - Configure MythDVD
- DVD_SETTINGS_PLAY - Configure DVD player settings
TODO
Find out more actions