[squeak-dev] Preference settings for 5.3 release

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Fri Dec 20 22:18:07 UTC 2019


A preference elimination initiative would be *very* welcome, but
it is something that we should start working on immediately after
the 5.3 release.

Preferences are like other bad habits: easy to get into, and
hard to eliminate. So let's all make a New Year's resolution to
lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier food, and get rid of
unnecessary preferences in Squeak.

For the current release, I think that we should limit discussion
to specific default preference settings that we might want to
change for the upcoming release.

Dave

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 12:57:15PM -0800, tim Rowledge wrote:
> We have a *lot* of preferences - in my view way too many - and there should be at least some discussion about the default values we provide for 5.3 
> tl;dr - Too many preferences, too badly organised. reduce, make decisions, simplify.
> 
> I can't imagine I'll hit all of them here but let's try to get something done - 
> 
> Arithmetic 
> Should we have these as preferences? How many people understand enough about Burnikel-Ziegler recursion splits to make it sensible to easily change?
> 
> Compiler
> I claim we are long past the point where enabling block argument assignments or underscore assignment should be a default. Fix your damn code!
> Are we sticking with the EncoderForV3PlusClosures encoder?
> 
> Examples
> These are for the test suite and if possible should be hidden
> 
> Files
> The one entry here relates to the encoding of stdio streams so maybe this category should be renamed?
> 
> Graphics
> Both entries relate to sub-pixel font rendering, so again, rename?
> 
> Morphic
> So. Many. Preferences.
> Surely at least the text edit related ones ought to be removed and kept to the 'editing' section?
> 
> OLPC
> Really?
> 
> TextDiff
> Could be better placed; in Tools?
> 
> Tools
> 'Use unified message labels' What does this do? Is it worth allowing a choice for this sort of thing?
> 
> browsing
> Aargh! More options than 31 flavour ice-cream stores! How many are actually of value?
> 'ignore style if only bold'?
> 'menu button in tool pane' - no actual senders, for example
> 
> colors
> 'Use the new color picker' - is the new color pick not our pick for picking colors? If it still isn't the sensible choice more than 10 years later, maybe we should dump it completely.
> 
> fileout
> are there ever good reasons to not have 24 hr timestamps? For not checking for slips?
> 
> general
> Wow, still more flavours of ice-cream.
> 'Read only mode' - no senders. It's so old there is no timestamp.
> 'Use locale' is there any reason to ever not use it?
> 
> .... and my brain melted at this point.
> 
> 
> 
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Useful random insult:- Couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
> 
> 
> 


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