Missing Program Description

[birdman]

Presumably the correct way would be to edit the autotimer before saving it and remove the "New: " bit.

Precisely. Which is why I always do that (and remove it from the Description too).

[ccs]

A partial match means that what you search for is in, but may only be part of, what is looked at.

It does not mean that only part of what you are searching for is present.

So even in a partial match everything in your search string must be there (as a substring) but there may be more.

Yes, I've just worked that out the hard way (by trying things out).

I always assumed that partial match meant "reasonable match", but, as you say, the string you define as partial must be somewhere within the whole title.

[adm]

I thought that was the reason for using a partial match.

I'm sure you've said in the past you always use partial match in autotimers to avoid this very issue?

Reverse the logic. ‘New: Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys’ is the partial search string that you want a match in from a program with a longer (or same length) title containing all of those words in the same order.

I've always assumed that you have to edit out any unique words to use partial match.

In the two cases above I would have edited out "new:" before selecting partial match.
Possibly I would edit out everything but 'Scenic Railway'

I assume that that the PARTIAL search string is now 'scenic railway' and if that complete search string appears in the title of any other program (in the same word order) a match is indicated

In the case of 'New: Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys' this is the PARTIAL search sting, albeit the full title, and it doesn't match in Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys.
It would however partially match 'New: Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys, London to Southend Central'

Consider that the search is not taking each word in turn and then searching for a match for just that word. If it did any program title with the word “the” in it would possible match hundreds of other non-related programs with the word “the” somewhere in its title. It is taking the whole search sting as a single entity.

I’ve found that if I wanted all episodes of Dr Who but the BBC (and other channels that broadcast older series) will have titles such as

1) Dr Who death of the daleks
2) Dr Who rise of the cybermen
3) Dr Who
4) Doctor Who

The first 3 can be found with a partial match of “Dr Who” but would miss the 4 example
All 4 could be found with a partial match of “Who” but likely to also match many other non-related programs.
In this case I would set two autotimers, one partially match “Dr Who” and the other partially matching “Doctor Who”

[BrokenUnusableAccount]

I always assumed that partial match meant "reasonable match", but, as you say, the string you define as partial must be somewhere within the whole title.

I think "partial match" is, at least, rather ambiguous.

Is there help text? I can't remember.

Perhaps instead of "partial match" this option should be called something like "contains" or "includes".

A similar function in Thunderbird email/newsgroup filters calls it "contains".
Though they do present the options on screen in a order that makes it clearer what has to contain what.

[ccs]

I think "partial match" is, at least, rather ambiguous.

Is there help text? I can't remember.

Perhaps instead of "partial match" this option should be called something like "contains" or "includes".

A similar function in Thunderbird email/newsgroup filters calls it "contains".
Though they do present the options on screen in a order that makes it clearer what has to contain what.

I've never actually had a problem with autotimers, on the very rare occasion that they didn't work as expected, partial match sorted it out.

This may well have been by accident rather than design.

New: used to mean what it said, but now more and more repeats on different channels now claim them as "new".

And, to make it worse, channels which have spent the last 10 years broadcasting repeats, are now really showing "new" programmes.

I'm old enough to have seen everything that was ever broadcast , so spotting repeats isn't as easy as it used to be.

Maybe New: should be treated as a configurable option (strip it off), both in autotimers and search.

I've recently discovered that epg search can be called from movielist, something I've found very useful, but now I'm not so sure (accuracy wise).

[birdman]

I think "partial match" is, at least, rather ambiguous.

It's never been an issue for me. But then I have implemented search algorithms in assembler (although it was much simple to write virtually the same code in C 7 years later).

Perhaps instead of "partial match" this option should be called something like "contains" or "includes".

Sounds reasonable. I'd prefer "contains".

[birdman]

Maybe New: should be treated as a configurable option (strip it off), both in autotimers and search.

And what about Nouveua:, Neu:, Nieuw:, Νέος:, Ny:, Nuevo:, Newydd:, etc? (with apologies to any language that has a female programme).

It just complicates things when manually removing it isn't difficult.

[BrokenUnusableAccount]

And what about Nouveua:, Neu:, Nieuw:, Νέος:, Ny:, Nuevo:, Newydd:, etc? (with apologies to any language that has a female programme).

It just complicates things when manually removing it isn't difficult.

You would have to have a configurable list of prefixes and suffixes to strip off.
But I'm not seriously suggesting that would be the way to go for OpenViX EPG search.

[ccs]

And what about Nouveua:, Neu:, Nieuw:, Νέος:, Ny:, Nuevo:, Newydd:, etc? (with apologies to any language that has a female programme).

It just complicates things when manually removing it isn't difficult.

Not difficult, but a real pain when it could be done automatically for you every time if you choose such an option.

Maybe the option could be the text you actually want removing, then no what abouts to worry about.

[birdman]

Maybe the option could be the text you actually want removing, then no what abouts to worry about.

There may be people who have an EPG in multiple languages who would wish to remove a variety of them.

[ccs]

There may be people who have an EPG in multiple languages who wish to remove a variety of them.

Lots of key presses for them to put up with then at the moment. 25+ to remove Newydd: for example.

Let's forget it, making things easier appears to be off limits.