Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Slava just added application settings to MMS Logger on OpenRepos, available from the Settings application like Jolla's own applications. As far as I can see, there is nothing which prevents other applications which are hosted on OpenRepos from reusing this code as it's BSD licensed. I would encourage any Sailfish application developer to take a look.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

I would encourage anyone using that abomination to come to their senses and move application settings where they belong - in the application itself!

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

No! It makes so much more sense to keep all settings in one place. This stays true to multitasking: you can change settings while the application is running without going back and forth between menus to see the changes in action. More importantly, you can also change settings without needing the application to be running, which is particularly useful for heavy things like Stellarium, a web browser, a navigation application, and so on. They won't consume any memory, processing or battery power, and they won't automatically load pages/tiles which you don't need at that moment.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The API isn't final, afaik, even after almost three years of SailfishOS. Because of it, it is a mess. Harbour apps cannot use it, so if you want to publish your app in Harbour, this method will not be accepted anyway. I wonder if Jolla still believes this is the way forward.

And frankly I agree with pichlo, to change a simple setting all the way via the settiings app, scroll all the way to the bottom, then find the app again in the grid, is way too cumbersome.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The process could certainly be improved. For one, applications without settings (or without settings in Settings) should be hidden.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

(everyone has an opinion)

I would prefer all applications to have a common place (as originally thought by Jolla) and the settings option in the application to be able to open this panel. That is, have the same settings panel accessible from both places with the application running or not.

Most important, the settings should be backed up by the standard backup. (In Maemo you could define in the design which settings to be backed-up)

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

I see this as yet another developer and user public relations fail. Uncertainty is bad - they should have long ago decided and either:

Announced that the interface will never be officially available for third party apps & label it accordingly (System apps in options, etc.).

Or say that it will bee officially available (eventually...) and possibly even actually implement that.

This is pretty much the same thing I wanted to write - let's do it both ways! :) Both ways have their pluses and minuses, so lets combine them! There shouldn't be a big overhead as long as this is done properly. It also makes the apps more portable - they would still work on platforms without a central per-app config location.

Also one one argument (possibly already heard) for keeping the central app settings location: headless apps.
There might be applications that provide some non-app (no app icon) functionality and need a way to be configured. You could always do a app-icon and fake app - basically just a configuration screen, but a config screen accessible from unified settings just seems more elegant.

That should be perfectly possible & it was one of the arguments for the XDG-based & quite strict app folder hierarchy enforced for Harbor apps. It would be nice if it could actually be used for it's purpose.

I think its basically just missing functionality in the backup tool - any idea how much open source is it ? Just the backend and not the UI, as usual ?

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Does it?

When I am in my upstairs bedroom and want to switch the light off, I do not expect to have to go down to the garage where all the light switches are. I expect the light switch to be present in the room.

I do not mind having the switches in both places as per Saturn's and MartinK's idea but the primary place should be where they are most immediately needed.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

It's more like these 'smart' houses where you can switch off the lights from wherever you are in the house, as you can open Settings from wherever you are as well.

One other reason for the central settings location is that no two applications put their settings in the same place. One links to them in the pulley menu of the main view, another has them on a subpage, another has them hidden behind a button on a sidescrolling bar, or you have to open the application twice, or you have to go to the pulley menu on a specific page, and so on. No one remembers all this. With central settings, you don't have to look for anything because everything is right there.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

That is not how I see it. You can switch the light from "anywhere" as long as it is at the switchbox. There is a beauty and comfort in knowing that to control the lights in the bedroom, I have to physically be in that bedroom. There is nothing more annoying than not knowing when the light may go on or off because someone else may be operating the switchbox. There is nothing more annoying than having to open another application just to change something in the application I am already in. (Not to mention that I may already have Settings open for a different purpose. Now you are forcing me to lose my position in it to go somewhere else because of a completely unrelated application.)

The Settings application is a good place for global (e.g. UI or OS) settings that have no better place. Application settings have such a better place. Unfortunately, like with many other things, a "last resort dump for something we have no found a better place for" has through some misguided twist turned into a glorified central place where everything should go. Amazing how much you can get away with by calling it "modern".

No, no, a thousand times NO!!!

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Agreed. Also, worst case is when there is many possible locations for option for an app. So when you are using an app X and think if setting Y could be changed, you try to find the setting from the app first, and if you don't find it, you'll have to open the settings app and see if the setting could be changed from there. I think this is an actual problem with some Jolla apps like People. Some settings can be changed from the app itself, but some are accessed from the Settings app. And this sucks alot.

I bet Jolla primarily created the App Settings menu under Settings app in early stage of the system. They wanted to avoid putting any Android style setting button to apps, but also they didn't have any other way. Later they invented pulley menus, but didn't want to put the settings there because App Settings was already created.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Sorry to keep banging about this. Another thing is, I don't know about nthn but I see application's settings a part of the application's data. There are two related aspects.

One, application data should be sandboxed. No one other than the application itself should have access to it.

Two, if we share some part of the application data and let another application manipulate it, where does it end? Why not have one central application for all other parts of all applications' data? How convenient would it be to edit received messages, playlists and game scores from Settings as well?

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Completely unrelated but having the same "feel" is this modern fad in all linux distros (including SFOS) of having systemd orchestrate the device.
I am beginning to get annoyed by it... Where the hell did people decide that sysvinit was not good for them, having faithfully served the world for almost half a century?
Just asking, I am... :confused:

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The only real problem with systemd is that it hasn't been integrated into the kernel yet.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

god forbid me seeing that day

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Why, though? Which problems do you see with systemd that can't be applied in the exact same way to the Linux kernel as well?

Some replies in advance:

It's monolithic -> Linux, but also, it isn't really
It's against the UNIX philosophy -> no, it isn't, and also -> Linux
It's against choice -> GNU/Linux is not about choice (see http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00861.html)
It's really big -> Linux; if space is your concern, you might want to look for another kernel which isn't enormous, maybe Hurd. I wonder which will be first, Hurd or Neo900.
GNOME/KDE/... now have systemd as a dependency so it has to be installed -> okay, I can see this, but on the other hand, why not? Who on earth manually installs these behemoth desktop environments? And -> they all also heavily depend on Linux

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

app settings inside jolla settings should be ones you setup once and do not touch for a months. recently used options should remain inside app itself.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

This is also how Jolla's own applications do it. Inside the application, People and Documents have an option to show/hide the search bar, Calendar has an option to change which calendars are visible and which colours they should have, Email lets you change the sorting order, Maps lets you switch between different kinds of maps, and so on.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Well, it would be nice if the settings would go along in the backup-restore routine. As goes for the list of installed apps.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The thing is, all those settings we set up once and that's it. And I don't see the need for that to be outside of an app itself.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

AFAIK Jolla is using the same pattern as Nokia did back in the days. I remember that on the N900 and N9 most of the App settings were in the central settings app (at least the Nokia core apps) - correct me I'm wrong.

I really liked it, just because I *knew* where I could find a specific setting without searching them in the app in some sub-sub-sub menu.

IMHO in the end the only thing that matters, is *consistently*. If every app has their settings in the central settings app, why should I care? I know where to find them even without searching.

The main problem here is Jolla: They are so busy trying to "secure" their system and have non-breakable **** that nobody can really publish a "professional" app in harbour.
We don't have services/daemons, we can't really integrate into the system (accounts, custom notification categories, *settings*, etc.), we can't link against "unstable" libs... Srsly... why do they even care?

If I write an app and an update breaks it... Well, I have to put my fingers on it and fix it.

I had an app in the OVI store which executed a pre-uninst script that deleted app-made desktop entries. How can I do this on Jolla? I can't, just because the ****ing script is executed with privileged rights...

Sorry for this rant and off-topic ****, but I had to say it... I don't know where this should lead... Sometimes I think Jolla is more restrictive than Google or even Apple, while they have just a fraction of users.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Exactly, @kinggo. Plus, who is to decide which options you "setup once"?
Three examples from Sailfish of settings I use all the time:

1. Picture size in Camera. I change that based on what the picture is for.
2. Delivery reports in Messages. My provider charges me 2p per SMS where all others charge 10 or 12p, but at the price of charging extra for delivery reports. So I enable them only when needed.
3. Clear browser history. Need I say more?

In all these cases, a direct access to those settings straight from the relevant application would make much more sense.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Completely agreed. I'm all for enhanced security, but some (most, all?) of their restrictions are bonkers and based on ludicrous imaginary situations. Shouldn't Harbour be there precisely to prevent malicious applications from entering a user's device, rather than prevent nearly every application from doing so just because they require privileged access to this or that and these privileges might be abused in case the application should turn out to be malicious?

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

To you, yes. But: I don't know anyone who ever lowers the default resolution of their camera, you can achieve better results by shooting with the default resolution and editing afterwards as necessary. If storage is an issue, pictures on the Jolla phone only take up about half a MB each at the highest resolution anyway, and I assume phones with very high res, high quality cameras will have storage plenty - and if they don't, it isn't up to the operating system to clean up the mess. Charging for delivery reports is insane, nobody else has this problem.
Clearing history I can see, but you can also either use private mode or set your browser to automatically clear history on exit.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The point is that one man's "set once and forget" is another man's "change all the time". Someone else can probably provide completely different examples of settings I never touch but he needs to change frequently. If anything is "insane", then it is discriminating between different types of settings. All settings should be treated equally.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Which is why they should all be found in the same place instead of being scattered all over and up to the user to figure out in which submenu they might be hiding.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Be my guest, I give up. Hopefully someone else will make an alternative application with settings in a sensible place and that is the one I will choose to use.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

systemd is overtly complicated piece of code that adds crazy dependencies both upwards and downwards. Really the only benefit from it is probably a speedier startup but that can also be achieved with upstart. Besides even a full serial startup is fast enough when you are using solid-state disks.

As for your arguments, most of those I consider invalid.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Do we really need to turn this thread to a systemd thread ? If it really needs to be discussed I suggest creating a new thread.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

You are absolutely right, and I promptly apologise for diverting the thread. Sorry! :eek:

Back to settings; up to now I am convinced that the best way is to have settings in both a central place and accessible in the application itself, just as you originally stated I think.

There's no overhead really, and that way would suit both schools of thought. (remember, this is about choice, different users have differnt workflows!)

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

No, it isn't. If you need a million different options for every person that says not having that option would break their workflow, there is something fundamentally wrong with both your software and most of those people. You will always break someone's workflow, like the defective by design paid delivery reports.

What's needed is not more options, but sane defaults so these options are not necessary. I don't mean to say 'you're doing it wrong', only 'there are other ways to do it, if not better'. It's never possible to please everyone, and any project which tries to do so will eventually fail.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

+1, but...

Does this really work? Looks like the Gnome-KDE dilemma. Gnome: some parameters (too less) - KDE full parameters (too much?). I use gnome but with tweak tool, some gnome extensions, and additional dconf stuff. Less parameters but not good defined.

With KDE you have the problems from the other side: here the user does not know what to do with all the parameters.

What about the "reference" Apple. They had the grandmother-theorem in the early days. Did/does it work?

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

but with all this in gnome you are changing system setting/appearance. You dont have to go into gnome settings to change default webpage on default brovser.
Camera resolution settings outside of camera app. Brilliant.
Email.....one place to setup account, another one to download images automatically (or not) and the app itself.
Units for weather outside of weather app.
Do I have to go on? Like I said, I'll never change those settings after initial setup but still think that they are in the wrong place.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

The account settings certainly aren't in the wrong place. As in GNOME, you set up the account once in the system settings and you can use it with all applications without having to set it up again and again if you want to use different applications. I think it kiiind of 'works' like this in Android now, too. Of course, with Jolla still restricting third party access to any and everything, this isn't very obvious, but it is the intention. I hope we will live to see the day the restrictions are lifted.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

I can live with separate accounts settings but still fail to see the bennefit of having them outside of the app since I have to configure everything manually for each of them.
Name two apps that can share one account.
Seeing them all in one place does what exactly? On any platform.
I think that I have zero configured accounts under GNOME accounts but I sure do have more than a few in their apps.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Email applications, for one. Or an application for Facebook which does all the things Jolla's Facebook implementation doesn't do. Google, VK, ... Anything can share an account, just like any camera application can share the same camera. But again, so far there's no point to it yet.

Also, adding accounts in any GNOME application automatically adds them to the GNOME accounts section, or at least that should happen.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

Yeah, it's a pretty hard problem - if you add too many options you will drown in kombinatoric complexity, especially if you want to reasonably QA the thing.

On the other hand if you have too few options or even remove them you hit another issue - even if a feature or an option would be/was used by just 5% of your users, it is usually a different %5 for each option/feature! So if you don't add/remove 3 such features you are not alienating just 5% of your user-base, but quite likely 15%, which is quite a difference...

I'm not sure what's the proper solution for this, possibly:

• good default and better automation/auto detection - so you have to ask the user less thing in general
• good automated testing - so that you can survive the complexity caused by additional options
• extension/addon/plugin interfaces - let the people add (and maintain!) the missing functionality or configuration options themselves
• basic/expert settinngs - see VLC or the Gnome Tweak tool as an example

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

I think I've figured out where our differences lie. The "all settings in one place" camp come from the fruit or the search engine company background and want a phone that looks and behaves like one produced by those companies, but happens to run Linux.

I want a mobile Linux computer in my pocket that looks and behaves like a desktop Linux computer that just by the way also happens to make calls. I see absolutely no harm in having two, three or twenty email clients, all with their own set of account settings. I see absolutely no point in having all settings in one place. It breaks everything I believe a computer should stand for.

Re: Application settings inside Jolla's Settings
 

I'm insulted by that assumption.