Quoting Greg Knaddison <greg@pingvox.com>:
On Nov 12, 2007 6:10 AM, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr> wrote:
Options should be: - thrown away if useless (e.g. don't ask me to enable a feature, I have enabled the module already). - detected automatically whenever possible (and thrown away). - rationally grouped together when they must stay.
How about one more option on that list:
- Hidden, but configurable by admins
I am quite embarrassed by the current pathauto admin settings page.[1]
It is _insanely_ long. But many people have begged to have those features added so I can't just drop features. So what else can I do? I don't think there is any way to "detect automatically" on any of these items. Splitting them onto separate pages masks the problem and just requires more clicking and page refreshes.
My proposal is to remove the UI for infrequently used features, document them in the readme, and allow people to set them via a general variable editor or via the settings.php For example, in 99% of the cases the punctuation treatment should be "replace by separator". The module can default to that and allow overrides via variables set in the settings.php
Any good reasons not to do this? Does anyone besides flk and me like the idea?
I use pathauto so I hope you don't mind if I pick on only one of the settings, Punctuation settings. For this group you could consider one field for the replacement character and another field for a list of characters to replace with that character. One more field for a list of characters to remove and everything else would then be no action. I think the variable editor idea is a bit on the dangerous side. Too prone to errors for the majority of those using it (I want to say 75% but I have no statistics). While good experienced administrators could benefit from it; the inexperienced may well flood the lists. Earnie -- http://for-my-kids.com/ -- http://give-me-an-offer.com/