"Dave Liquorice" <allso...@howhill.com> wrote: >Of the series I routinely collect Horizon is the worst.
Well, Storyville is bad too. In my own program which I use to keep track of what I've downloaded (or skipped - the download history's no good for that), entries for various programmes need changed after the v2.91 change in data layouts in the cache files, but even before that my code for Horizon programmes typically contains lines like: call omit "\|2013-2014: Dinosaurs: 4. The Hunt for Life|\" call omit "\|2013-2014: 8. The Power of the Placebo|\" call omit "\|2013-2014: 9. How You Really Make Decisions|\" call omit "\|2013-2014: Sugar v Fat|\" call omit "\|2013-2014: 11. Where is Flight MH370?|\" call omit "\|2013-2014: 12. What's Wrong with Our Weather?|\" (these follow some code which mean at that point the program is only looking at cache lines which contained either: '|tv|Horizon|' or '|tv|Horizon:'.) Now that v2.91 makes "Horizon: 2013-2014" a separate list of programmes from those for, for example, "Horizon: 2012-2013" I could change my program to treat them as separate groups of episodes. But then, maybe, I'd need to change that back if the way the BBC list things, and hence how GiP creates cache files, changes again. I've not decided yet. Increasingly I code 'pid' in my tests, because although episode names and numbers change format, and descriptive texts sometimes get changed when a program is retransmitted, pids are fixed. So I may have lines like: call omit "\Series 2|\ & \|b04ttdk7|\ & \|6. Mortal Coil|\" call omit "\Series 2|\ & \|b04tthb7|\ & \|7. The Silence|\" ie exclude from the list of episodes that I may be interested in, any that include all three of those text snippets. Previously I'd also delete all the rules I had for separate episodes of something when a series ended, ie replace all the lines like those above with: call omit "\Series 2|\" but now, for some programmes, I keep the multiple rules because the information associating pid & episode name may help clarify things in future. For programmes which don't have episode names, I do generally try to put some snippet of descriptive text into my 'omit' rules, eg: call prog "Helen Keen's It Is Rocket Science" call omit "\Series 1|\ & \Episode 1|\ & \rockets and the men, women\" call omit "\Series 1|\ & \Episode 2|\ & \von Braun - from Nazi to\" * call omit "\Series 3|\ & \Episode 2|\ & \obsession with UFOs\" call omit "\Series 3|\ & \Episode 3|\ & \greats of astronomy\" call omit "\Series 3|\ & \Episode 4|\ & \Astronomical Errors\" call pend because it reduces the risk of a single typo of eg an episode number (by me in my rules, or by the BBC when they list something) from meaning a rule ignores a programme I was interested in. The BBC are sometimes lazy though in how they list stuff; whereas University Challenge used to include in its description which teams were playing, all the recent episodes have just had generic values. Having my own logic to tell me which programmes listed in a cache file might be of interest means I can do things like: if yyyymm == "201503" then call omit "\Series 4|\" for some programme; that is, I've not downloaded them, and I don't want to be told about them any time this month (too busy writing programs to keep track of programmes to actually watch any!) but next month I may well want to know about them...) and it also means I can keep comments about why I liked or hated some programme in amongst the rules. My program's quite complicated; I can find things in terms of snippets of subject or presenters' names or anything else, which means I'll always know eg if a presenter whose style I like starts a new programme I've never heard of (provided their name is in the programme name, episode name or the description). For example I search for "James May" but exclude from those hits listings of "Top Gear". Separately I search for "Top Gear" episodes because once in a blue moon I watch one. I end up with a list of items which might be of interest because they match a whole set of different tests, and might well have been excluded (in theory) for a bunch of other reasons, but if any one reason is still left at the end of that, the thing is highlighted. -- Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own. _______________________________________________ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer