New patch: Settings Display Within Menus. DONE!

[AM]

It's nice to see that there's been some extra focus on usability the last couple of days. This patch is my contribution.

It allows values for settings to be viewed and modified from directly within the menus (you don't have to select them to display them on a separate page).
Activated via General Settings -> Display -> Settings Display.
So far only the aforementioned menu, plus Playback Settings and its submenus, have been changed to allow for this. I thought I'd await comments/suggestions/testing before I go ahead and convert all settings menus.
Now done converting all the menus!

I'd love it if you guys gave it a try and help me with testing/suggestions.

So far only tested on H100 sim, H300 sim and iPod4G sim.and a few more

screenie:


link: http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/5833

[lowlight]

Interesting...I would suggest modeling it after the "Show ID3 Info" screen (it's a list were each item is 2 lines). It might look cleaner and scale better to other targets (particularly those with smaller screens).

[AM]

Interesting...I would suggest modeling it after the "Show ID3 Info" screen (it's a list were each item is 2 lines). It might look cleaner and scale better to other targets (particularly those with smaller screens).

AFAIK with the current list code you cant have different amount of lines for list different entries, which could be a problem since on many of the settings screens there are a combination of actual settings and submenus (would mean empty lines after each submenu?). Also, I'd like to be able to keep the option of displaying the value for the selected item only, which would mean one entry with two lines, the rest just one - again not possible.

Personally I don't feel like redoing all the list code to allow for a differing number of lines for different entries and I really doubt it'd be possible to get it to work well on really small screens or with huge fonts so I think it might be better if those users just had this option switched off, using the current method of editing settings on a separate page.

[LinusN]

I wouldn't want different line heights for sub-categories. Instead, I can imagine something like this:

Code: [Select]

Volume
                 -11dB
Sub-setting
       -------------->

or something like that.

[AM]

I wouldn't want different line heights for sub-categories. Instead, I can imagine something like this:

Code: [Select]

Volume
                 -11dB
Sub-setting
       -------------->

or something like that.

Hmm... Shouldn't be all that hard to add that as an option I guess (except perhaps if you want a really fancy graphical arrow). Maybe I'll give it a shot later on. Currently I'm a little fatigued from coding many hours straight so right now I won't touch the code for a while unless I find any small but glaringly obvious bugs.

[AM]

Now added :

• Option to enable/disable right-align of values
• Multi-line support (title on first line, value on second)
  

If you've tried an earlier version of this patch save your settings before upgrading, then reset and reload.

[bluebrother]

I like it. Especially when configured like the last screenshot (that configuration should be default IMO). But: the right-aligned text looks a bit too "right" on the target -- the left-aligned text has a 1 pixel distance (which is clearly to see when highlighted) while the right aligned text doesn't -- giving it a 1px distance would look even better.

[Llorean]

I agree with everything bluebrother just said.

[AM]

I like it. Especially when configured like the last screenshot (that configuration should be default IMO). But: the right-aligned text looks a bit too "right" on the target -- the left-aligned text has a 1 pixel distance (which is clearly to see when highlighted) while the right aligned text doesn't -- giving it a 1px distance would look even better.

Hmm... It looks like that 1px left margin is there only when the scrollbar is visible, am I correct (just going by sim now)? Do you propose adding the right margin only when the scrollbar is visible, or add it regardless of whether the margin is there to the left or not? Either way seems kinda weird to me...

[ilikedirt]

I like it. Always thought that having a seperate page for each setting is kind of confusing (almost empty pages where you just can select yes/no).

[AM]

Ok it seems that the margin or no margin issue is font dependant. For now I hard coded an additional 1px right margin for aligned text, meaning for some fonts there'll be a 2px margin to the right. Perhaps it's ok to leave it like this but I'd prefer if there where some better way to do this...

[Yotto]

That looks pretty cool.  I can't wait to try this "in the field."

As to the margins, I imagine that you can't do much about the font.  I mean, how are you, as the program, going to know if the font has a border of whitespace around the letters?  I think it'll be far more noticable (and far worse looking) to have it be sometimes 1px and sometimes 0px, than for it to be sometimes 2px and sometimes 1px.

IOW, my vote is to force a 1px margin.

[mightybrick]

I like it.  I can't test it on my Nano, but I like the idea and the screenshots.

[AM]

Actually, the more I think about it, the less I like the current fix with a forced 1px margin to the right. Some fonts have no margin to the left, so then you end up having 0px to the left and 1px to the right. Worst case scenario: font has no margin to the left, but 1px to the right - then you've got 2 empty pixels to the right and none to the left! 

And working around this by just forcing an additional 1px margin to the left will screw up the scrolling. When the text starts scrolling it wont disappear behind the left edge of the screen or behind the scrollbar, it'll disappear 1 pixel away from it. So which would be worse; text that only has margins sometimes, or text that magically disappears 1px away when scrolling?

[Yotto]

I'd have to see it, but I'd guess the 1px margin that magically stays through scrolling would be better.
If you have room for them, margins can only be a good thing.