[vdr] Re: A Bug which should be turned into a feature ...

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Karsten Mueller wrote:
...
> and (if required) an aditional 
> 
> svdrsendp.pl -d YourVDR "HITK down" e.g. for pausing or any other key combination. It's 
> only up to your imagination what your scripts should do :)

I do not think the HITK interface as it is today is any good for such things.

Imagine a script that blindly sends vdr a "HITK down" in order to pause replay.
That is like somebody else in my living room with a second remote who randomly
presses keys while I am trying to do something at the same time.

Of course, if I happen to watch a recording at that time, it does the intended thing.
If I happen to watch live TV, it zaps to another channel.
If I am in the process of deleting a recording, it may even position the cursor
to the next recording down and if I do not pay attention, I may then press YELLOW
and OK and delete the wrong recording!

The problem is, that all keys are modal.
What they do depends heavily on context.
In an interactive situation, this is often acceptable.
For a scripted situation, it is not.

IMHO, a small and easy-to-implement feature that would reduce the problem would
be a ROOT SVDRP command that resets the menu system to the root state. If a menu is
on screen, it would act like the MENU key has been pressed. If no menu is on screen,
it would do nothing.

If course, that would solve the above case where I delete the wrong recording,
but it would not solve the other case where I zap instead of pausing.
To solve that, I suppose something other that HITK altogether is needed.
In other words, the mapping of context+key = final command should be untangled
and SVDRP should provide direct access to the final command.

Carsten.