[vdr] Re: Subdirs and Subtitle - another implementation suggestion

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Uwe Freese wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Another idea / thing to think about:
> 
> - as you know, it's possible to make a timer
> 
>   MD----- 18h-19h Simpsons
> 
>   and when switching "use subtitles" to "on", VDR stores the episodes in
>   subdirs that are named with the subdir title
> 
> - but  what  if  I  have to use single timers because of other starting
>   times each week, e.g.
> 
>   3.2.   18h-19h       Simpsons
>   10.2.  18:15h-19:15h Simpsons
>   ...
> 
>   When  I want to "group" this one-time-recordings into a subdir, I only
>   can set the timers to
> 
>   3.2.   18h-19h       Simpsons~somestring
>   10.2.  18:15h-19:15h Simpsons~somestring
> 
>   but that dosn't look nice.
> 
> Maybe it's an idea not to use the "use subdir" function in the way it is
> implemented now but some sort of "macro string".
> 
> That means, if I make a timer entry
> 
>   10.2.  18:15h-19:15h Simpsons~SUBTITLE
> 
>   or
> 
>   3.2.   18h-19h       Simpsons~SUBTITLE
> 
> the string "SUBTITLE" is replaced.
> 
> This  could be more generally used as the present solution, I think.
> 
> I don't know if it makes sense to implement also a "TITLE" or some other
> macros.
> 
> Bye, Uwe.

I like this idea very much!

The only thing to consider is whether using SUBTITLE is the right way to go.
VDR internally uses this name for variables that hold that information, but
I'm already considering changing that because normally "subtitles" are those
texts that appear at the bottom of the screen, making the dialogs readable
for people with hearing problems or who don't understand the original language
of a movie (which VDR doesn't yet support, but if it ever will, there would be
a name clash).
So using SUBTITLE here would manifest this in the user interface, too.

>From what I can see the official ETSI names used in that area are not very useful,
since they use expressions like "short text" or "extended description". I'd like
to use names that have a real meaning to the user.

So, since using this feature is most likely always going to be in the context
of a series with individual episodes, I guess I'm going to use the two keywords

TITLE    for the title of the series
EPISODE  for the name of the current episode

and replace these with the actual data at the time of recording in the "File"
parameter of the timer. This will even allo a timer file like

  TITLE~EPISODE

which will name this to whatever the tv station broadcasts at the time.

If no EPG data is available at the time of recording, TITLE will default
to the station name (with or without the preceeding '@', depending on the
individual setup) and EPISODE will default to "_" (actually a 'blank' character),
which is what it does already in case of a periodic timer.

Any objections to this?

Klaus
-- 
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Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10
CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40
Hofmark 2                               Email:   kls@cadsoft.de
D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de
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