Re: [Stellarium-pubdevel] News

[Barry G. <bar...@ho...>]

What is wrong with the way we do it now. I am happy with it in windows. Maybe it is more combersome on other platforms.


Barry Gerdes
Beaumont Hills Observatory
S 33' 41' 44"    E 150' 56' 32"
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> From: fab...@go...
> Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 23:37:42 +0200
> To: ste...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Stellarium-pubdevel] News
> 
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 16:57, Timothy Reaves
> <tr...@si...> wrote:
> >
> > On May 27, 2009, at 5:51 AM, Fabien Chéreau wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Timothy,
> >> I understand the need for a more advanced data base for your new
> >> plugin idea, but for the configuration parameters, I think it is much
> >> easier for a user to use a .ini file to change 1 value by hand than
> >> trying to load a database and perform some SQL queries..
> >> In fact in VirGO we are adopting a kind of data base as well (tokyo
> >> cabinet), but we still store config parameters in the .in files.
> >> Fabien
> >
> >        I would assume there is some OR layer available.  There is for every
> > other language.  As for it being easer for a user to edit a textual
> > configuration file, you're incorrect.  It is not easier.  The user has
> > to find the text file, open it, wonder what the allowed values are,
> > wonder what the data type is, save it, run the program, and see if it
> > works.  Even Windows did away with them 10 years ago.
> 
> Well I personally find the windows registry extremely difficult to
> understand compared with a simple .ini file.
> 
> >        It is far easier, safer, and less error prone to provide a UI panel
> > for a user to edit these values.  Validation can be done immediately,
> > and a program restart isn't necessarily needed.
> 
> I agree with that, however it's not related with how you store the
> config value. You can imagine a nice UI panel displaying data coming
> from a .ini file as well as from a SQLite database.
> 
> >        This does go back to the whole plugin topic though; there are many,
> > many applications out there that allow user-written plugins, that all
> > provide a UI interface for preferences.  They need not be overly
> > complex; a simple key-value editor can be automatically generated at
> > run time.
> 
> OK, now I think I get your point. You want to avoid the plugin
> designer to mess around with config files, and let them use a simple
> higher level API to manage the config options instead. This should
> allow to create a generical option editor.
> 
> We could imagine to merge back Stellarium and plugins option in a
> single repository/database/file, but using a design allowing to define
> for each parameters:
> - whether it should appear in the option editor
> - a human readable description
> - a formating check, e.g. a regex
> 
> Additionally, the options needs to be structured so that we can for
> example have a "plugins" group containing the options sets for each
> plugins, each set in his own subgroup. Actually a JSON file would do
> it pretty nicely.
> 
> {
> "plugins":
> {
> "Ocular":
> {
> "loadAtStartup": true,
> "maxExitCircle": {"value": 5.7, "description": "The largest
> exit circle for all of the oculars.", "editable": true}
> "oculars": [{"name": "My eye piece1", "focalLength": 15},
> {"name": "My eye piece2", "focalLength": 55}],
> ]
> }
> }
> }
> 
> It would be even maybe more clever to use a proper JSON schema for
> each attribute as described there: http://json-schema.org/
> 
> Fab
> 
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