Bill Davidsen wrote: > Jens Hatlak wrote: >> OTOH the average user won't have to care about the two prefs that >> caused the problem here once the bug fix is available as part of the >> next release. >> > Do you have any idea how elitist that sounds?
Maybe you just got me wrong, please read on. > Dozens of people have filed bugs, discussed this on servers, in chat > rooms, and on other mailing lists. But they're just average users, and > because this stuff means their user agent doesn't work they do care a > great deal. And will the next time some totally undocumented option is > needed to make some common task work. The tone of your "average user" > comments shows how little you value other people's time. My point is that the average user shouldn't have to care about these prefs at all. At least not to work around bugs. The problem at hand is a bug, and as such it should be fixed. It's just that *in this particular case* dealing with these prefs helps to *work around* the bug until the fix is available (here: with SM 2.0.1, due next week). In many other cases there are no prefs, hidden or not, that help to work around a problem. > Because this stuff might change is exactly why about:config should dump > all available values. Or call it about:everything. People already know > they may break something, and things may change, what's new? Prefs that do not appear in about:config unless manually set are prefs without obvious default, i.e. their default and type (!) solely depend on how they are used in the internal implementation. As I said, the implementation can change any day it is developed further. How should those be shown in about:config when they are not set by the user (in which case they already appear in the current situation)? How would the user know which type (string/boolean/integer) they are and what possible values would be? OTOH, if a pref would be important enough to be useful for more than a very small minority or seldom edge cases, the developers would only have to define a default for it and it would appear in about:config by default. If you find a pref that you think deserves that kind of attention you can file a bug and request that. It'll depend on your reasoning whether it'll be accepted or not (and the reviewers, of course). All I'm saying is that making a pref visible by default just because it works around a bug that should (and was!) be fixed another way is the wrong way to go. HTH Jens -- Jens Hatlak <http://jens.hatlak.de/> SeaMonkey Trunk Tracker <http://smtt.blogspot.com/> _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
