This argument seems to recur frequently in this community. This point in particular prompts me to offer a solution.<br>
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On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:10, Stuart Morgan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stuart@tase.co.uk">stuart@tase.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
On the basis of experience I can bet that many of them will still play with<br>
the values and in the process they will cause playback problems that they<br>
don't connect to their messing with things they don't understand.</blockquote><div><br>I agree, this is certainly a problem and is best avoided.<br><br>But I believe the answer is NOT to use hard-coding and the unnecessary exercise of a full compile as a mechanism to sort the people who need to tune it from the newbs. The time of a compile operation alone can make repeated experiments very painful to those truly needing to do so.<br>
<br>The better answer, IMHO, is quite simple: let's just not provide it in the GUI.<br><br>"Advanced configurables" is the term I generally use for this type of setting, to refer to tunable settings values that are documented and honored, but simply omitted from the user interface.<br>
<br>In MythTV's case, settings table values, documented of course, with the currently hard-coded values as defaults -- but simply not offered in the GUI -- would be ideal, I should think.<br><br>The level of expertise required is high enough to abate destructive newb curiosity; the level of tedium is conveniently low for those who truly want/need to easily tune the values; sensible defaults are easily provided; and project maintenance is no higher than for any other configurable setting (indeed arguably less since there is no GUI maintenance required).<br>
<br>If we fear that the entrepid newb will STILL adjust it, to her peril, it's easy enough to document a stern warning alongside with the setting's authoritative reference entry, where presumably she will have gone to find the value anyway.<br>
<br>This strategy is my own preference in my own projects, and is very common and effective elsewhere too. I hope the MythTV community can consider it thoughtfully and embrace it.<br><br>$0.02,<br>Eric<br></div></div>