From: c s <rb_dev_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 18:44:38 -0800 (PST)

--- Bj&#246;rn Stenberg <bjorn_at_haxx.se> wrote:
> c s wrote:
> > I guess the real question is... what was the
> >reason
> > for the change to not allowing shutdown when
> >plugged
> > in? Does it serve a purpose or fix a problem?
>
> This was changed for a number of reasons:
>
> 1) Many users were confused by the unit rebooting
> instead of "shutting off".
>

That confusion exists only on the recorder where the
"boot progress bar" is shown and the display doesn't
go dark while in charge mode. The player simply clears
the display, turns off the backlight, and displays the
"BATTERY CHARGING" message. On the player this reboot
looks like a shutdown... no confusion whatsoever.


> 2) Technically, there is no gain or reason
> whatsoever to reboot the device. Doing it just
> because Archos does so is not a good reason either.
>

On the recorder that is true, since we want keep
running the Rockbox charging algorithm that we control
the behavior of.

The correct solution on the recorder would be to
emulate what the player does, only without rebooting:
clear the display, turn off the backlight and display
some basic charging information. The user would exit
this state by pressing the on button which wouldn't
boot anything but would just switch back to the "on"
state.

On the player there is a good reason to boot to the
charging screen... it gives the user a correct looking
response to the off button, and it displays charging
information while in this pseudo "off" state.

> 3) When running Rockbox in flash, rebooting without
> a regular powerup sequence introduced many new
> problems/bugs.

So we fixed those bugs by breaking/disabling the off
function for everyone? Maybe this quick and dirty fix
should only be in flash specific code instead of
breaking the off function for everybody to fix a flash
problem, especially on the player where there is no
confusion whatsoever with the so called &#8220;reboot
to the charging screen&#8221; which looks like a
normal power off sequence to the player user.

I suspect that this quick and dirty fix for the flash
problems/bugs was really the main reason for disabling
the off function. It certainly didn't as the CVS log
claims eliminate "confusing" behavior... not at all on
the player, and on the recorder it replaced the
confusion of a reboot sequence with the confusion of
wondering why the off key doesn't work.

>
> 4) Several people (myself included) have felt there
> is a need to be able to prevent people from
> accidentally shutting off the archos, since it makes
> a loud pop noise which is rather unpleasant when
> connected to a power amplifier at high volume.
>

Again, we break the off function for everyone as a
solution for this obscure &#8220;problem&#8221;?
Isn&#8217;t the correct solution to allow natural
learned behavior to take place? My home amplifier
makes an unpleasant noise if I&#8217;m running my TV
audio through it and I shut off the TV before the
amplifier, but it would be absurd to disable the off
button on the TV to fix this problem instead of
learning &#8220;if it&#8217;s unpleasant every time
you do something, don&#8217;t do it&#8221;.

> The only reason I have heard in favor of rebooting
> is simply that some people are used to it.


That hasn't been to only reason stated, but that alone
is a VERY good reason. People are used to an off
button always working... on the Rockbox and on every
other electronic device I have ever seen. That's the
whole idea behind a good user interface... to do what
people have come to expect, especially when it's some
basic function not unique to Rockbox. If your user
interface doesn&#8217;t do what people are used to,
(especially for a common function found on thousands
of other devices), that is a sign of bad design.
Disabling an off button is confusing to the user. The
off button should always do something even if it's
nothing more than a logical state change that displays
"OFF" on an unlit lcd screen while the unit really
remains in a standby state. That is how you eliminate
confusion, not by deliberately breaking/disabling a
very common user action.



=====
Craig

rb_dev_at_yahoo.com

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Received on 2003-11-30