Hide "advanced" theme options?

[JdGordon]

This is a half idea to maybe fix some of the confusion with themes and settings.
If this option is added and enabled (so these settings are hidden) the only options under the theme settings menu would be load a .cfg. You would not be able to set colours, load a sbs or wps manually (from the browser or settings), ditto backdrops, etc.
This would completely eliminate confusion because all the settings which make up a theme would be hidden from the user.

With the option disabled it would be the same as now, complete with all the current confusion.

[Llorean]

Where's the third option, "remove most of those settings permanently"?

I think loading .sbs, .wps, and .cfg manually are okay, but most of the extra settings themselves can be dropped.

[JdGordon]

I've tried having this discussion also, it ended pretty aggressively last time and I gave up.

The civil argument is it forces users who dont want fancy but do want colours to create a .sbs to do it.

IMO loading backdrop, sbs, wps, icons file (not in the menu though) are all useless and just add clutter. Ditto for colours and "ui viewport" (also not a menu-ed setting)

[Llorean]

I think loading the individual files via context menu (not automatic behaviour via associated file types) might be nice for people who really want to mix and match themes.

But with the complexity of themes increasing vastly it might make sense to shunt everything to actual theme files.

Is there really that many people who say "oh, darn, man, I really, really need the screen to be purple with cyan text right now!" who couldn't set it up in advance.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't really understand what the user who needs a colour setting expects? Do they change colours often, or is it something else?

[AlexP]

I agree - it is time to move to loading pre-done themes (in the large part).

[Llorean]

I mean I wouldn't object to the possibility of a "customize this theme" context menu option later that loads a plugin capable of tweaking theme settings for the very advanced (including GUI preview of positioning viewports, basic image editing, font preview, etc) or anything, but that's head-in-the-clouds wishes.

I don't think the normal settings menu needs much of anything beyond a basic "load theme" especially given that RBUtil can help most users acquire themes very easily now.

[karashata]

I'm so far agreeing to the idea of removing most of the theme settings from the menus, with the themes getting as complex as they are it would make more sense to let the config file do most of the work. Leaving the options to load a different .sbs or a different font along with the main "load theme" option though would be a good idea in case someone prefers a different status bar than the one used by the theme (rather than the theme's or none at all...), or wants to use a different font (though we already know the issues with that one, with themes for the most part being specifcally built around a certain size font...)

[saratoga]

I always thought editing themes on device made very little sense and would support removing some or all of those options, at least in principle.  We can better use the RAM for other things.

[JdGordon]

I've changed my mind, removing the menu items doesnt fix anything. the current system is broken and I want to fix the actual issue, which is setting priority.

refer to mailing list thread for details.

[GodEater]

I've changed my mind, removing the menu items doesnt fix anything.

It does, as saratoga has pointed out, get us back valuable RAM though...

[JdGordon]

numbers from e200 with svn r24254

removing the entire theme menu from the build reclaims 1200bytes, (maybe another 400 for the strings... MAX)
removing the colour picker screen reclaims a further 2400 bytes

compare that with:
removing tagcache: 46KB
removing dircache + tagcache: 56KB
quickscreen: 4KB
album art: 5KB
morse input: 1200bytes

[Llorean]

What that tells me is "remove theme settings AND quickscreen (to be replaced with a shortcut to a folder of cfg files ) for twice the savings!"

[karashata]

So... ultimately it's not really worth it..? (I certainly hope no one's seriously considering removing the quickscreen, it's got its uses... It's faster than the WPS context menu, if only by a little bit...)

[JdGordon]

yes, that's my point. being careful about ram is always good, but we are talking about the compressed audio buffer here. 100KB means 6 seconds of 128kbps audio.

[karashata]

Well... If you were to remove some the menu settings, at the least you'd clear up some potential clutter that's not really that useful anymore...

I still think it might be good to reduce the theme settings to a "load theme" option, as well as a font selector and a custom status bar selector, since that's really all I can see anyone really needing... (If anyone *really* needed to tweak any of the other settings, they could do so in the config file for whatever theme they want to tweak...)