From: Psyco Dedman <psyco_at_psyco.yi.org>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 20:26:18 -0700

I disagree... the problem is that everybody uses a *different* 10%...
i'd much rather see "bloatware" than lowest-common-denominator...
the better way to go IMO is a thought out, simple, and flexible system
for the options, such that the user gets to what they want...
i think the feature's themselves take more space than a little option
set how the feature behaves, and so i think if we have a feature it
should be as configurable to suit your needs of it as however makes
sense for that feature...
the normal case for open source software allows users to compile with
whatever sets of options they'll use... i like this approach, but it's
not as feasible for this type of project since many archos users won't
be compiling their own anything... so with this type of approach we end
up with different builds like others have suggested, with different
feature sets, but as the available options grow this also gets messy...
as to the solution to all this, the best i can come up with at right
now is configurable configuration :P heh...
that is, a setting that lets you configure what configuration options
you see and how they're layed out... this'll probably make you
cringe...
but with such a thing we could easily have 2 or 3 build levels
"lean" which has just the normal basic options,
medium-level that's more feature-rich and configurable, which
would likely appeal to the broadest user base,
and a "rich and creamy"/"advanced" build that has the configurable
configuration and all the advanced options that most users won't
care about...
Personaly, i bought my archos [pre-rockbox i might add] in the hopes
that it would get new firmware that allowed me to do *everything*
that this device is conceivably capable of...
eventualy we'll have games and text-readers and faked visualizations
for even the player's, i think :p
In fact i started a game for my player back before rockbox was rockbox
with misc pieces of code like the 'text scroller'... i should finish
that now that i could actualy load game data into it :p
but i digress, the point of all this is new power and flexibility on
"old" devices, and i'd just hate to see arbitrary limitations imposed
for the sake of saving 1 or 2K that you can compile without if you want
to anyway...
I do think that there's already too many options under the "General
Settings" menu... but to me this just means that the configuration
system is in need of some rethinking altogether, and should have
a real, and flexible, design...
maybe i'll play with some code for that, and i'm sure someone else
will too...
We'll see...


Robert Tweed wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Eric Linenberg" <elinenbe_at_umich.edu>
>
>
>>I too agree. The more options the better. I don't hear anyone
>>complaining about too many options.
>
>
> I've already done so once, and I'll briefly state the reason again. If there
> are a huge number of mostly unnecessary options added, we get "bloatware",
> much like Microsoft office (90% of users only use 10% of the options). That
> results in something that is too big to efficiently do what it was
> supposedly designed to do, instead of a small, lean, efficient tool.
>
> Evefy time we add another option, we increase the binary size, and increase
> the complexity of the UI; neither of which is a good thing. Obviously, if
> this is balanced by a *genuinely useful* option, then it is worth adding. If
> not, someone needs to make the decision to drop the option completely.
>
> I want Rockbox to do everything it is supposed to do, do it well, and do
> some other cool things that are *useful* (I include the games, BTW, because
> I think it's good to have them for when you are stuck in a lift, or
> whatever...) I don't want to see hundreds of options that no-one ever uses
> and very few people even remember what they do. This is one major problem
> with open source stuff; one that hopefully we will avoid.
>
> - Robert
>
Received on 2002-08-20