small army needed - test major patch

[JdGordon]

im working all this week ( ) so i dont know how much time i will have to play with this, but when i do get a chance im going to try fiving the nano dta abort, and figure out what to do about the scrolling selection screen...

and talk about the selection screen buttons... we'll discuss this, but in another thread, and in a little while...

ta

[AlexP]

im working all this week ( ) so i dont know how much time i will have to play with this, but when i do get a chance im going to try fiving the nano dta abort, and figure out what to do about the scrolling selection screen...

Every one has to from time to time!  Just curious, I assume this patch is to simplify the internal architecture of the menus etc, as clearly we here are trying to make it the same to the end user as before (other than the settings not resetting on config block bump)?

Oh, and I've managed to buy a 60gb drive from ebay, so hopefully I'll be back up and running (and testing) soon...  

[JdGordon]

yes, the patch simplifies the whole way settings are handled, from saving/loading of cfg files, to menus and settings, and i've been told i have to keep backwards compatibility which means make it so the user never knows anything changed.

and congrats

[JdGordon]

yay, that was fairly painful, but we found the bug, nano version is on the wiki for the lazy's....

[JdGordon]

new toy for you all to play with in v22 of the patch (will be uploaded as soon as im done with the reply)
if there is a file /.rockbox/user_menu.config a new menu item will apear at the top of the main menu called "User Menu"!
this lets you have your own favorites there, and can be any menu item that can be reachable from the main menu.

the file is a regular text file something like this...

# browse wps files
3,2,1
# write config file
4,3

etc...
each number is the sub item you want linked to.. (0 based..), so the 3,2,1 means "general settings" > "display settings" > "browse wps"
if you want to be funny, you can have "endless" looping, -1 will goto the main menu, there is no danger, except if you do that you will get to a point where it wont let you enter any more submenus untill u back out... ( you can have a maximum on 32 items int he user menu, and no, you cannot make sub menus there... yet...)

this is most probably the last new feature that will get into the patch, because i would like to see it "commitable" by the end of the week... so lots of testing please

Oh! im not sure if i ever mentioned the other added feature.
putting ~ at the begining of any setting will force that value to be written back when settings are saved, even if the actual value is different...

i.e
~volume = -33 will never save any other value except -33 to volume, you will be ablw to change the value, but it will always be -33 in the config file.
I added this because i am sick of blowing my ears off when i turn on the player and forget i had it on full volume, so this forces it to always start at a sane level. (you are allowed 16 of these values)

[RaeNye]

General Settings->Display->Browse .(r)wps files does nothing (browse fonts/plugins/themes do work)

are u sure you have rwps's ?
 the rest is fixed..

No, but I sure have .wps's...

Actually, I never use the cancel button, whereever it is, because it gives a 1 sec delay showing the "cancelled" splash.

That was really annoying for me as well.

What about something like "LEFT cancels, RIGHT applies and backs out, SELECT applies and stays in the menu" without any splashes at all?
Keeps the one-click option for those who use it without any new settings.

[Llorean]

RaeNye: If I were designing it, that's pretty much the key definitions I'd pick.

[Rincewind]

new toy for you all to play with in v22 of the patch (will be uploaded as soon as im done with the reply)
if there is a file /.rockbox/user_menu.config a new menu item will apear at the top of the main menu called "User Menu"!
this lets you have your own favorites there, and can be any menu item that can be reachable from the main menu.

WOW!
That's amazing. I have to try this out right now. I'll try to make this menu available in my record button configuration patch so that iriver users can have one button access to this menu.

Oh! im not sure if i ever mentioned the other added feature.
putting ~ at the begining of any setting will force that value to be written back when settings are saved, even if the actual value is different...

i.e
~volume = -33 will never save any other value except -33 to volume, you will be ablw to change the value, but it will always be -33 in the config file.
I added this because i am sick of blowing my ears off when i turn on the player and forget i had it on full volume, so this forces it to always start at a sane level. (you are allowed 16 of these values)

I don't know if I understand this correctly, but does that mean that these default values get loaded at every boot?

[Rincewind]

What about something like "LEFT cancels, RIGHT applies and backs out, SELECT applies and stays in the menu" without any splashes at all?
Keeps the one-click option for those who use it without any new settings.

*Thumbs up*

I know that this should be discussed later, but I just had an idea I want to get rid off.

The only problem I see is, that when a user presses SELECT and backs out with LEFT afterwards the setting gets cancelled, which might not be what he wanted. So I would say that when you have pressed SELECT,  the settings was applied already, so going out with both LEFT and RIGHT should make no difference.
Or we could make both RIGHT and LEFT apply settings and leave; and only use STOP to cancel. That would be reasonable for a newbe, too. If he fears to have done something wrong, he would press STOP anyway (I would do).

[Llorean]

I think that the idea was "Left leaves the setting where the checkmark is visibly" which would mean that if you moved the checkmark with 'Select' then "backed out" the setting would still hold.

[Rincewind]

I think that the idea was "Left leaves the setting where the checkmark is visibly" which would mean that if you moved the checkmark with 'Select' then "backed out" the setting would still hold.

OK, with this definition, that's what I wanted to say.

[Rincewind]

testing the patch, I found some small "errors".

* in Sound Settings -> Crossfeed -> High Frequency Atenuation
 the Values of the Settings have the Unit "Hz". They should have "dB".
* Some integer settings have the highest values on top, some have them at the bottom. Maybe this could be unified?

I took a look at the code, too.
The Menu code looks much cleaner than before and it is easy to see where things should be added to create new menu entries. But to add a new setting it looks like there are more places where I have to add code (settings.c, settings.h, settings_list.c, maybe more?)
I like the comment style you used to make clear what entries belong to which menu.
But I found it confusing, that nearly all the menus are inside main_menu.c and sound_menu.c but without a logical order which menus are where.
I would suggest to put all the menu definitions in one file and the functions and callbacks in a second file (or more files if one is too big). This would make it possible to rearrange the whole menu structure by only editing one file without moving functions and structs between files.

I noticed, that the onplay menu isn't converted yet. But it seems to be fully functional. Are there plans to convert this too or is it something completely different from the main menu?

[JdGordon]

hey all...
RayNye: bugger, nothing looks wrong.. so ill have another look this arvo.

Rincwind: "I'll try to make this menu available in my record button configuration patch so that iriver users can have one button access to this menu." - I think this should replace (optionally) the quickscreen, i dont know if anyone agress with me tho.

re: button arguments again im making a post to the dev mailing list later this arfternoon, hopefully we can come to an agreement there, but thanks for the suggestions

Rincewind again: bugs, ta, ill fix them.
the menu code hasnt really been neatened up yet, but it will be so its in a more logical order.
as for adding settings, you need to add it to settings.h (like currently), then settings_list.c (instead of settings.c like now), one of the menu files (if relevant), and then you need it it settings.c under settings_apply(), so actually one less thing to do than currently (you dont need to put it under settings_reply() like you used to)

and lastly, yes, only the main menu has been converted so far, the others will follow, although there is no real reason to.

[Rincewind]

I think this should replace (optionally) the quickscreen, i dont know if anyone agress with me tho.

I would agree with it. It should be optional, though. I think many people really like the quickmenu.

I have an idea for the favorites menu:
Would it be possible to have .cfg files appear directly in the menu? With this, one could load several settings at once with only one menu item.
More generally, it would be very nice to specify a file in the user_menu.config like this:

Code: [Select]

# something from the main menu
1,2,3
# load cfg file
.rockbox/flat_eq.cfg; "Flat Equalizer"
# load plugin
.rockobx/rocks/tetrox.rock; "Tetris Plugin"
# play mp3
music/my favorite tune.mp3; "The best song ever"


[JdGordon]

ha, nice idea, I'm not sure if it will actually be possible tho.