[Geany-devel] Build config dialog change

[Lex Trotman]

On 13 June 2010 07:46, Jiří Techet <techet at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 07:44, Lex Trotman <elextr at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Nick, Enrico, Jiri,
>>
>> I have made a version of build such that In the build config dialogs,
>> that is both "set build commands" dialog and project properties tab:
>>
>> 1. settings being overridden from another source are insensitive
>> (current behaviour)
>
> Why can't one change the global commands when they are overridden by
> the project ones?

Because of the potential confusion if you change it and nothing
happens because its overridden it was decided to make it insensitive.

>
>> 2. fields where the setting is set from another source but the source
>> edited by this dialog can override that setting is shown in grey (the
>> colour change is new)
>> 3. when you enter a field (or click on the label button) the text
>> changes to normal colour to indicate that this source is now
>> controlling the setting (the colour change is new)
>> 4. When a row is cleared the text returns to grey as the original
>> source is no longer being overridden (the colour change is new)
>>
>> This changed the way the conditions to save the setting were calculated.
>>
>> Because this is more than a trivial change I have committed it to the
>> unstable branch (and a second one to remove a debug printf oops) so
>> Nick/Enrico can check it to see if they are happy for it to go into
>> 0.19 to help reduce the confusion.
>>
>> @Jiri I hope this makes things clearer.
>
> This is MUCH better than before. The only problem might be that the
> user might not know what the change of the color means. (The problem
> with me now is that I understand completely what geany does so I can't
> look at it independently enough to see what a user with no knowledge
> about it will think

That of course is very much my problem as well. :-)

. If only I could erase my memory from the last few
> days :-) But I like it.
>

Yes, it took a long time to disentangle the misunderstanding from
issues around the plugin, hopefully just a user's confusion would be
more obvious.

> So just to summarize what I see as the remaining problems and what's missing:
> 1. Clearer indication that filetype commands change for different
> languages (I'd also like to see the language selectable in the dialog)

The heading of the filetype commands states the language.

 This is made up of the language name and the word "commands".  That
combination still makes sense when translated into most languages, the
more complex we make the heading the less likely that is.

Making it selectable will be considered for build system 2.0 but its
too much for this version. And as I explained I'm don't like UIs that
save hidden changes, as will happen if you make changes to several
filetypes, and having a reminder dialog all the time is annoying.



> 2. Grouping execute and build commands together so it's clear that
> they are per-filetype (now I have an idea for name substitution for
> "non-filetype" - maybe "filetype-independent" could be clearer)
>

Not changing for 0.19, string freeze was weeks ago.

> And I have one more idea - wouldn't it be better to put the contents
> of the "set build commands" dialog as a new tab in the "preferences"
> dialog? This would mean that there are only two settings dialogs - the
> preferences dialog for global options and "project properties" for the
> project ones.
>

This won't change for 0.19 and as I keep saying the intention for the
next version is to have a combined dialog

Cheers
Lex

> Cheers,
>
> Jiri
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