[mythtv] SoC 2006: Configuration Revamp Information

[Justin M. Hunt]

----- Ross Campbell <ross.campbell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Justin M. Hunt wrote:
> > > Please post any feedback you have on these proposed removals, or
> any other ideas for the configuration revamp.
> 
> I was just discussing a similar issue of product setup complexity
> comparing one product that has about 20 config options and basically
> works out of the box, and another competing product that has about
> 300
> options that would confuse most typical end users.
> 
> In almost every case, the "simple to config" product has highest
> customer satisfaction.
> 
> I've been involved in projects where we've tried to deploy new tools
> and technology, and had MONTHS of focus groups with 'power users' to
> determine their requirements, and in most of those cases, I've found
> that power users are nearly impossible to please and they'll do
> whatever they want anyway. In a few cases, we expanded project scopes
> SIGNIFICANTLY to try to satisfy 5-10% more people and ended up with
> unnecessary complexity that frustrated a good 50% of the userbase.
> 
> I'd take the same approach here... I believe the *DEFAULT* config
> system must cater to less technical users, assign reasonable DEFAULT
> values to many options that the majority of users have no need to
> change, and even pre-configure other configurable options for the
> most
> likely or most common hardware or most common setups.
> 
> Then, I'd have an expert mode setting that displays *all* of the
> options in all their glory for anyone who wants more. I don't even
> know if an "intermediate" menu setting is even needed.
> 
> Would it be helpful to gather current config settings from mythtv
> users to get more real data about what options should have a default
> set and not be listed in the 'basic' configuration?
> 
> Maybe you could send out a simple sql script to dump mythtv config
> options and have people mail that info to you so that we could get
> more datapoints for what options are actually modified with what
> values and what frequency?
> 
> -Ross
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Hi Ross,

I like your idea of getting settings from the users, I will talk to Daniel
about doing something like that. The only problem I would forsee is having
hundreds of dump's and just me who can analyse them.  It seems like it would
use significantly more of my time than is needed, and which could be better
spent coding the new system.  As I said, I will ask Daniel what he thinks.

Justin