Thinning out Gemstone2

[jusjoken]

While I have not had much time to actually work on Gemstone2 I have been giving it much thought and as it will likely be fall before I do much more on it I thought I would collect some feedback on the direction(s) I may take it.

Comments and concerns on the following are welcome (although I cannot guarantee it will change my mind )

Separation from SageTV7.xml (the core STV)

In the past this was a key design goal as there was a lot of change going on in the core STV so making sure Gemstone maintained compatibility was key. I no longer see this a a driver so I plan to move away from this. If others do add key functions to the core STV through other than plugins then on a case by case basis I can review and see if I add that in.

Removal of Core STV Setup code

Where Gemstone contains Core Setup code as it was built on top of SageTV7.xml I will likely remove this code and call the core STV directly from gemstone and then return to gemstone. The core STV already supports this model so I would like to leverage that.

One way to do things

As Gemstone is built on top of SageTV7.xml and then adds in new features like Flows, it often complicates the code as well as confuses users as many don't even notice the NEW way of doing TV for example and end up using the old methods that really do a poor job of delivering the Gemstone way of doing things as they are really a second thought and not the primary feature. This also means a loss of development time spent on the new stuff when fixing issues in the "legacy" stuff.

So the goal here will be to REMOVE the legacy ways of doing things. So if you cannot do something related to media right now in a Flow... then I will add the feature to the Flows as the legacy method will go away.

Advanced User Mode

One common "complaint" of Gemstone is its too complex. The above thinning out will assist especially with the "One way to do things" approach. However, the sheer number of options for users is daunting for many but appreciated by others. There was a lot of effort into making Gemstone flexible as I know one size does not fit all so I will not lose this but at the same time I want to encourage users to jump in and get going quickly.

So I will consider mapping settings to a simple (default) mode or advanced mode. The advanced mode settings will be "hidden" or just another step away for users so Out of the Box users can just use Gemstone with all the "common" Flows etc all ready in place.

Syncing with Phoenix API

Gemstone2 will need some changes just to match up with the cleanup stuckless has done, including getting rid of defunct weather providers and ensuring Gemstone2 is not using deprecated code. As well the fanart functionality needs fixing and likely some of the things Gemstone does related to fanart may need to move to phoenix so reduce some duplication and/or differences in how Gemstone/BMT/CMT etc may handle metadata and fanart.

Other related thoughts

• V9+ only - Gemstone2 will NOT ever run on SageTV V7. It will also depend on other plugins that have that same dependency.
• The current Gemstone release will not have any fixes from me. Consider it done.... of course the code is available so others are welcome to adopt it
• this will not occur overnight or soon so lots of time to give this consideration
• having a GREAT interface to bring on NEW users is a KEY goal for me. New users lead to new developers which lead to new users....this is a trend we need to make happen.
• make core changes to support SELECTION of an STV from the initial configuration wizard so users do not need to launch the legacy STV and then learn SageTV to then discover plugins and then try out other STV's. We should be able to have a single image like the Theme selection screen for STV authors to provide along with a SALES pitch so users can select a UI right up front (of course they can always change it later too)
• maintain compatibility with a subset of plugins... removal of legacy code will CERTAINLY break some plugins....so this will need to be tested and more current, often used plugins from Gemstone users will need to be verified and perhaps updated to work with Gemsonte2. IF you have a plugin you use with Gemstone today....respond in this thread so we can consider it for Gemstone2.
• implement some type of "hook" so plugin authors can "target" Gemstone2 so the menu system can easily offer new features from plugins (rather than having to use the Menu Manager Copy Mode).
• Testers will be needed once we go this direction as LOTS of code will be changed/removed and things will then break!!!
• Developers can join the fun..... joint efforts are more difficult to coordinate but spreading the fun is always welcome. JOrton is already on board as part of the Gemstone2 team and I know stuckless delivers so much of the core functionality Gemstone uses in Phoenix Core functions so there is a team behind this (others have also worked on Gemstone in the past so this has always been a team effort)

So nothing is firm yet but I wanted to get some thoughts passed out to others and get some feedback before I get going on any major changes this fall.


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[samgreco]

This seems to be a great direction. Gemstone always felt "heavy" to me, although I love it and use it.

I've found that the only flow type that isn't really slow for me is the Inline Flow. Any of the others seemed to cause a lot of spinning circles.

So thinning Gemstone and moving it away from the core STV, seems a good direction to me.

[wayner]

Sounds good to me and thanks for all of your work on this.

Regarding plugins, I am not sure if these are for the default UI or if they were adapted for Gemstone but here are some that I use: Comskip Playback, Enable/Disable Faves, Dynamic Skip Times, Name Timed Recording, SJQ UI, Java Heap Monitor, Thumbnail Navigator, SRE.

A lot of these were down by TMiranda.

[reggie14]

Gemstone took a fair bit of work to set up. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but I can certainly understand why some would find it overwhelming.

I can't remember what the initial configuration is. But I know I changed it a fair bit. I would think that it should be possible to come up with a default config that would work well for 80% of users. Personally I would strongly support separating TV shows from movies in the default configuration.

I almost think anyone going beyond the default configuration is probably going to be an advanced user, so I'm not sure what kind of "simple" configuration options you'd want to provide.

That's somewhat related to what I think is a bigger problem to solve- fanart/metadata selection. I assume this would still rely on phoenix and BMT. This works pretty well without much configuration, but when it fails it is pretty hard to correct. Unfortunately, I think stuckless has indicated he has no intention of updating BMT unless something breaks.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by reggie14

That's somewhat related to what I think is a bigger problem to solve- fanart/metadata selection. I assume this would still rely on phoenix and BMT. This works pretty well without much configuration, but when it fails it is pretty hard to correct. Unfortunately, I think stuckless has indicated he has no intention of updating BMT unless something breaks.

Well, I might have changed my mind on that... I did have to update it because of changes that jusjoken did for the collection support... And now that I have it up and running again (ie, in dev mode), I'll likely do some other changes, etc.... So I guess it's not dead yet

[panteragstk]

I hear you on cutting down the options. If I can get what I have without using so many plugins I'd be very happy. Bit I use some things that I went over in the other thread that would be hard to give up. TV explorer being one of them. I don't use sage for movies since the playback isn't there for windows clients so I'm not that concerned with that aspect, but if I could get things working the way I want I use the wall view so if that's included I'm good. I use the category view, but not often.

Gemstone is a must have for me so I can't wait to see what you come up with.

[bialio]

Breaking from the default STV was one of the best decisions we made in Phoenix UI. Just the ease of editing and moving around in Studio makes it worth it. Only downside is you have to do a lot of the work that plugins used to do for you.

[tmiranda]

I've always been a "default STV" user but perhaps it's time to think about moving on. If you want to integrate any of the plugins I've written directly into Gemstone let me know.