Enhancement: Tweaks

[Zardoz2293]

Requesting consideration to adding a feature in XY Configuration which is a Tweak List. Effectively it would be a extreme low maintenance vertical list of all the XY configuration tweaks available that require you to do a manual edit of XY's ini. Perhaps it would be released in phases:

Phase #1:
The list would contain the Tweak: Name, Value, Range, Description.

Phase #2:
Allow you to edit the Value field, but enforcing the correct value would be up to the end user (much faster than manual edit of the ini)

Phase #3:
Edit of the Value field would be restricted to the data types and ranges only accepted by the tweak.

Phase #4:
Would contain all XY configuration options included in the GUI. This would allow a very fast way to find everything under the hood.

Phase #5:
Add Search.

What are your thoughts?

[j_c_hallgren]

Requesting consideration to adding a feature in XY Configuration which is a Tweak List. Effectively it would be a extreme low maintenance vertical list of all the XY configuration tweaks available that require you to do a manual edit of XY's ini.
What are your thoughts?

Sorry but somehow the old phase of "when hell freezes over" come to mind on this topic! Why do I say that? Because quite a while back, I had posted a wish asking that all (not just some as now) tweaks have as minimum a one line description of what it does..and that went nowhere because Don said it would take too much effort ...so....

Part of the reason these are tweaks is that they are things that most users won't need or desire and doing what you're saying is somewhat elevating them to GUI level.

I think what might work as well and be MUCH easier on Don: For us users to collect documentation on all known tweaks in a file that could be made available for download on XY site or via a sticky thread here...

Update: What I'm thinking of is a stripped down or reformatted vers of history.txt with only the tweak items...only downside is that it's only updated on Official Release dates but better than nothing.
yes, it might get out-of-date a bit but it would provide a place to get this type of info.

[nas8e9]

This has been suggested before here and here. My takeaway was that Don will add search at some later date but nothing more.

Edited to correct the second link.

[eil]

What I'm thinking of is a stripped down or reformatted vers of history.txt with only the tweak items...only downside is that it's only updated on Official Release dates but better than nothing.
yes, it might get out-of-date a bit but it would provide a place to get this type of info.

imo, best solution for the time being.

[Zardoz2293]

As a veteran member of the hardcore elite of software developers I'd find the Tweak List, in a format something very close to what I specified herein to be of great value to anyone who has used XY for any period of time. I've hunted down somethings before that took way longer than I'd desire and not been able to find others (not a slight on XY). Documentation and Developers, ha, ha, ha, ha like oil and water never the two shall meet even with an emulsifier, too much effort, yeah. I'm not into external anything when using a product, software or otherwise. If it works for you great, but not in my workflows. I like my 100 percent as I've only got one life to live. Now if Don doesn't want to do it that is his call. I may not agree, but I'll accept, well not really, I enjoy pushing water up hill. Having end-users create the documentation sounds like a great idea, but I'm sure that isn't his concern, at least directly. If the only concern was documentation, might I suggest what I posted but without the documentation.

(tongue-in-cheek)

[nas8e9]

@Zardoz2293: Sometimes being around for a while, doesn't help. My understanding though, of Don's use of tweaks is that they're a high-cost necessary evil which he won't invest further in and which he's started to limit as much as possible.

As for user-created documentation, that has a history too (a search on "wiki" should get it) and is again, not something Don has previously indicated he'll spend time and server capacity on. Given the big task of localisation coming up and the fact that tweaks tend to concern relatively few users, I'm guessing this won't happen any-time soon (j_c_hallgren already used up the most obvious saying ).

Then again, not so long ago I pointed people to the explanation of why XYplorer would never be translated, so...

[j_c_hallgren]

Thinking about this a bit more -- if we were to 'crowd source' the needed historical data into a form that Don could use to add the Tweaks to the CHM/Help in a new section or separate file, that might be quite useful...the only issue would then be maintaining it and that would take Don's time.

This lack of tweak documentation came up recently with another bug issue...I thought there was a tweak related to problem but had a heck of a time finding it as there was no consolidated list.

So having something easily searchable, even a CSV file, with section|name|desc|values would have been a real timesaver.

Addendum;Update: Found my thread that i was talking about before re description of these
http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5096

[nas8e9]

Thinking about this a bit more -- if we were to 'crowd source' the needed historical data into a form that Don could use to add the Tweaks to the CHM/Help in a new section or separate file, that might be quite useful...the only issue would then be maintaining it and that would take Don's time.

This lack of tweak documentation came up recently with another bug issue...I thought there was a tweak related to problem but had a heck of a time finding it as there was no consolidated list.

So having something easily searchable, even a CSV file, with section|name|desc|values would have been a real timesaver.

Searching History.txt didn't work in that case? I've seen Don pointing to that (searched backwards of course) as the one and only tweaks documentation.

[j_c_hallgren]

Searching History.txt didn't work in that case? I've seen Don pointing to that (searched backwards of course) as the one and only tweaks documentation.

Not really...too much "fluff" that dealt with tweaks and other stuff made searching difficult so gave up and just scanned INI looking for 'tweak'.

That's why a file with one line per tweak would be much easier to work with...with a CSV, it could be imported to Excel for user sorting, etc.

[PeterH]

Thinking about this a bit more -- if we were to 'crowd source' the needed historical data into a form that Don could use to add the Tweaks to the CHM/Help in a new section or separate file, that might be quite useful...the only issue would then be maintaining it and that would take Don's time.

This lack of tweak documentation came up recently with another bug issue...I thought there was a tweak related to problem but had a heck of a time finding it as there was no consolidated list.

So having something easily searchable, even a CSV file, with section|name|desc|values would have been a real timesaver.

Addendum;Update: Found my thread that i was talking about before re description of these
http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5096

1) Please: a separate file, don't integrate in current help file.
(Next I would ask to split it off )

2) Isn't it so that at least many tweaks have a short line of documentation in the XYplorer.ini?

[Zardoz2293]

task of localisation coming up

Now that's a maintenance issue.

[j_c_hallgren]

That's why a file with one line per tweak would be much easier to work with...with a CSV, it could be imported to Excel for user sorting, etc.

FWIW: I took my INI file and extracted all the "; Tweak:" items into a CSV file and reformatted a bit -- added descriptions to a handful of ones that had none -- maybe others can makes use of it?
It has: INI section that tweak is within, tweak key, MY current value, desc of tweak.

XYplorer tweaks.zip

MY current tweak settings from v10.80.0316

(4.04 KiB) Downloaded 186 times

NOTE: If a tweak did NOT have a "; Tweak:" comment, it's NOT included -- not sure how many of these exist but I'm sure that some do -- would have taken too much effort to cross-ref to change logs.