From: Bob J. <bob...@lb...> - 2011-08-16 04:52:28
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On Aug 16, 2011, at 1:29 AM, Dick Bronson wrote: > On the Service Mode and OPS mode programmer's 'Roster Entry' windows > there are two buttons, 'Save to Roster' and 'Reset to defaults'. Has > anyone ever considered what happens if you press one and then the other? > What happens is that you destroy the roster entry's connection to the > decoder with no way to restore it if you don't remember the decoder > address and/or realize what has happened to you! NOT GOOD! All true. A few thoughts, in no particular order: 1) The various factory resets in the menu have the same problem, just the other way around. They warn you, but then they make a change that's results in the roster entry being different from the decoder content too. 2) There are things we could do to improve "Reset to defaults": 2a) Change it's name. "Load default values into the following panes, don't forget to write to the decoder!" is a little large for a button, but something along those lines might be clearer. 2b) Add warnings and reminders before and after it does its thing 2c) Move it to the resets menu. Not sure if its a good idea to put it in the same place, as this is a "content of DP" reset, not a "content of the decoder" reset, and that needs to be kept clear. 3) There are ways not involving resets to get things out of synch: Edit a value and save-to-disk without save-to-decoder, or vice versa. Those two operations were originally separate because people wanted to be able to experiment with values in the decoder, and only save them permanently when they liked the results. Perhaps that could be done a different way? 4) If the device gets completely out of synch, the best recovery is to put it on the programming track and just read the contents. For ops-mode-only LocoNet devices, like various boards, implementing ops-mode-read would allow those to be read back (it's already present in JMRI, and works, or at least did when I tested it a while back) Bob -- Bob Jacobsen, LBNL Bob...@lb... +1-510-486-7355 fax +1-510-643-8497 AIM, Skype JacobsenRG |