On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 4:58 AM, Jonathan Gordon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2. Settings bloat. > Yes, we have lots of settings (168 in the e200 sim) but why is this > bad? If you don't change a setting and are happy with the default then > good for you, your config.cfg will be a lot smaller than someone who > does change a lot more settings. When was a decision made to make > rockbox only for the common person? The whole point of rockbox is for > people who want to customise and use their DAP the way *they* want to, > not the way someone else wants to impose on them. > > Now there is a very valid argument here that the menu is crap, and yes > that's true, but then that should be the focus of our attention. Fact > of the matter is that we use less energy arguing about it than > actually fixing it. Yes there is a wiki discussion about fixing it, > but I wonder if we should talk about splitting up the settings menu in > such a way that infrequently used settings are placed differently in > the menu (hidden if you don't want to see advanced settings maybe? Or > moved to a plugin even?) > > I'm actually willing to bet that if we hid advanced settings in the > menu, most people would show them, change the setting then hide them > again to unclutter the menu. > > Last point on this, at least half the bin/ram usage associated with > adding settings is in the code to add it to a menu. If some of the > less used settings were pushed out of the core there would be plenty > of bin savings to be had. > The more settings we add the more difficult it is going to be to make the menu easy to navigate and to find your way in. So while i agree that a lot can be done by improving menu structure adding more settings invariably makes the settings menu worse IMHO. One common complaint from new users is exactly that this settings jungle is hard to navigate so i feel this is an argument against adding more settings. That said i don't think we can stop adding _any_ settings but we need to seriously consider if the setting is useful. I do personally change about 10 settings from the default but i don't think everything I don't use should be dropped but what if we get a (good) patch adding a setting maybe only the patch author will use, should we include it in svn? I'm with pondlife on the advanced settings menu btw, hiding stuff just makes the whole issue worse IMHO. Nils
