Reliable stripping of padding from recording timers

[prl]

When I get the instant recording changes I've been working on tucked away, I'm considering on doing the work to make it possible to calculate a recording timer's unpadded time. Amongst other things, it's likely to prevent short IceTV recordings from getting the wrong description and from matching the incorrect EPG slot for Change Timer.

At the moment, a recording timer is created like this ("=" entries are default values):

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	RecordTimerEntry(serviceref, begin, end, name, description, eit, disabled=False, justplay=False, afterEvent=AFTEREVENT.AUTO,
		checkOldTimers=False, dirname=None, tags=None, descramble='notset', record_ecm='notset', isAutoTimer=False,
		ice_timer_id=None, always_zap=False, rename_repeat=True)

When a padded recording timer is created, it's something like:

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	begin = epg_begin_time - config.recording.margin_before.value * 60 # recording margin is in minutes
	end = epg_end_time + config.recording.margin_after.value * 60
	RecordTimerEntry(serviceref, begin, end, name, description, eit, ...)

What I'm proposing is to add a couple of extra (!) optional arguments to constructing a RecordTimerEntry

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RecordTimerEntry(timer.TimerEntry, object):
	RecordTimerEntry(serviceref, begin, end, name, description, eit, disabled=False, justplay=False, afterEvent=AFTEREVENT.AUTO,
		checkOldTimers=False, dirname=None, tags=None, descramble='notset', record_ecm='notset', isAutoTimer=False,
		ice_timer_id=None, always_zap=False, rename_repeat=True,
		before_margin=0, after_margin=0)

So now that you'd do:

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	RecordTimerEntry(serviceref, epg_begin_time, epg_end_time, name, description, eit, ...,
		before_margin=config.recording.margin_before.value * 60,
		after_margin=config.recording.margin_after.value * 60)

Internally, the RecordTimerEntry would calculate

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self.begin = begin - before_margin
self.end = end + after_margin
self.beforeMargin = before_margin
self.afterMargin = after_margin

and define properties like:

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	unpaddedBegin = property(lambda self: self.begin + self.beforeMargin)
	unpaddedEnd = property(lambda self: self.end - self.afterMargin)

Entries in timers.xml would get new attributes before_margin and after_margin that would default to '0' if absent.

AutoTimers and IceTV timers would convert across to the new form automatically as new timers are created, typically changing over completely in about a week. Existing padded repeating timers (e.g. created in the EPG) would need to be re-created manually to take advantage of the new feature.

Manually entered timers would be created with the padding values as 0.

This would also potentially allow per-timer padding settings.

[IanSav]

Hi Prl,

Could existing manual timers be updated to the new format by editing the existing timer and saving it without making any changes?

Regards,
Ian.

[prl]

I'm not sure how to do the timer editing yet. It's mostly of interest for timers set from the EPG, and "delete old timer, create new timer, adjust repeat" doesn't sound much harder than trying to set the correct padding parameters. I don't think that it should just do automatically adjust all existing timers.

But I'm open to suggestions.

[peteru]

Couple of comments...

* See if you can apply consistent naming. Padding vs margin. To preserve compatibility you may need to stick with margin. Or is there a good argument for having both names?
* Consider handling the margins as a single tuple rather than two arguments/variables. i.e margin=(0,0) instead of before_margin=0, after_margin=0. Less code and easier to read.

[prl]

Couple of comments...

* See if you can apply consistent naming. Padding vs margin. To preserve compatibility you may need to stick with margin. Or is there a good argument for having both names?

No good reason. Perhaps something like programBegin and programEnd instead of "unpadded" begin/end. I can't think of names that use "margin" for that context that aren't clunky.

* Consider handling the margins as a single tuple rather than two arguments/variables. i.e margin=(0,0) instead of before_margin=0, after_margin=0. Less code and easier to read.

I'm fine with that. I just used the separate arguments for margin_before and margin_after to follow the use of separate begin/end names in the __init__() argument list and the naming of the config variables.