Squeak 5.1 PreferenceBrowser notes

> I actually sat and read through, and tried, all the preferences. It was not a lot of fun. Here are some notes resulting from that marathon of pain.
>
> Basic points
> ========
>
> Ridiculous mix of upper and lower cased and camel-cased preference names. Some with spaces, some not. Accompanying help text often needs spelling, grammar or factual fixes.
> The 'help' button window refers to a non-existent 'theme...' button. And has mis-spelllings.
> In general we have an insane number of preferences that seem to do nothing interesting . Probably time to get rid of a lot of them and simplify life.
>
> Specific items, with often snarky commentary.
> =============================
>
> block assignments - should not be allowed
>
> underscore assignments  - should not be allowed; see Cuis for a way to do it right.
>
> Examples - why are they in the tool? Several appear to be unused anyway
>
> subpixel rendering - not able to see any difference; is it actually in use?
>
> auto-enclose - doesn't match capability with autoEnclose. See TextEditor>>dispatchOnKeyboardEvent: Also, one has char as arg, other has event. Yuck!
>
> highlight hovered row in lists - seems wrong to have the preference in PluggableListMorph but used in just two classes that are not related.
>
> 'Menu request updates list/tree selection' help text is gibberish
>
> 'Use new style balloon morphs' why bother offering the choice instead of dropping the old ones?
>
> Browse with drag'n'drop - does this need to be a pref?
>
> syntaxHighlightingAsYouType - none of th three seem to have any users
>
> Use the new color-picker - is this of any use?
>
> Corner Grip * - ditto
>
> Flaps - are they still in there?
>
> Thorough senders - dump it
>
> automaticPlatformSettings - what?
>
> modalColorPickers - seems pointless
>
> readOnlyMode - no usages?
>
> alternateHandlesLook - why?
>
> biggerHandles - why? has some interaction with tinyDisplay/bigDisplay
>
> haloTransitions - I don't think so
>
> magic/maintain/mouseOver-Halos - what?
>
> generally halo stuff seems to have an insane number of preferences that are not used.
>
> keyboard duplicate/swap stuff - way too complex and poorly explained
>
> simpleMenus - doesn't really have much effect
>
> timeStampsInMenuTitles - can't see what it is for
>
> menuBorderWidth - doesn't actually seem to relate to menus at all
>
> menuTitleBorderWidth - ditto
>
> - in fact none of the menuXX items seem to be used for menus
>
> Show wrap border in code panes & Wrap border limit - why in 'performance' and what are they supposed to be for?
>
> alternativeButtonsInScrollbars - any use?
>
> too many scrollbar options. must be a better way to make such choices, or actually decide on something and stick to it.
>
> inlineServicesInMenu - comment makes no sense.
> - do we still need the preferences if we always have services?
>
> 'Offer native fonts' only works with an apparently unused set of StrikeFont code (#fromUser: etc) and the code even breaks on linux since there are no truetype fonts (on my machine at least) Thuse the list of fonts is nil and the TTFileDescription class>>frontFromUser:allowKeyboard: code breaks.
>
> 'Selections may shrink' - is there any case where that would not be true?
>
> Font choosing
> =========
> not part of preferencebrowser, which seems odd.
> appearance->systemfonts menu seems to not be matched to the themes fonts stuff? Preferences class>>restoreDefaultFont probably needs to use the theme data.
> #setDemoFonts likely simialr, and a 'return to normal' is needed too.
> 'Offer native fonts' only works with an apparently unused set of StrikeFont code (#fromUser: etc) and the code even breaks on linux since there are no truetype fonts (on my machine at least) Thuse the list of fonts is nil and the TTFileDescription class>>frontFromUser:allowKeyboard: code breaks.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Spell checkers at maximum!  Fire!
>
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>