From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 06:10:51 +0200 (CEST)

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Will wrote:

> In my opinion the ideal interface design would have each of the interface
> components defined as functions/modules/blocks of code then a simple
> interface menu to call these pieces of code. That way the pieces could go
> together like legos and everyone with even a little bit of computer
> knowledge could build an interface to suit them.

This has been suggested before, and while indeed a thrilling idea we still
haven't seen anyone suggesting a nice and easy way to do it.

> I know this is a somewhat simplistic description of a more complex concept,
> but if it could be implemented it would provide a fully customizable user
> interface. I would be happy to help but I haven't done any real programming
> in several years and my skills are extremely rusty at best.

The problems when something like this is considered are quite a few,
including:

 * states - we have lots of states today within the screens and such, so that
   different keys do different actions. This makes custom keys very
   complicated. It would probably require a more or less complicated built-in
   scripting language.
 * recursiveness - we cannot invoke "stuff within stuff" as we risk blowing
   away our tiny little stack. For a configurable key system, we would
   probably need a single key switch() somehow.
 * debugability - not the biggest point, but the moment we add custom key
   support, every person's custom keymap will make Rockbox harder to debug as
   lots of bugs will then depend on their setup even more than today.

Not to mention that I think it'll make the code size grow considerably.

I say we leave this for Rockbox v3! ;-)

-- 
 Daniel Stenberg -- http://rockbox.haxx.se/ -- http://daniel.haxx.se/

Received on 2003-08-25