Kodi Community Forum

OpenELEC has a new settings app in their cutting edge builds that has a new descriptive area to give a short summary of what each setting does. It describes whatever is currently selected, both for sections and individual settings. It's not a wizard, and it's not over-the-top, it's done just right and it's awesome. So awesome that I propose we rip off the idea for XBMC's core settings and Confluence. Small descriptions like this will go a long way for usability.

Here's some examples:

Well the new settings system already supports localizable descriptions per section/category/setting. Just the GUI integration is awful and needs improvement.

EDIT: And obviously someone has to write the descriptions.

Wiki has a nearly complete list of settings descriptions: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Set...n_settings

:D

so we need to reserve some language string range for that.
help="" is where they string id needs to be filled in?

I can do a WIP pr for that this weekend with adding the help strings.

@nedscott
we should at least try to keep the strings in sync with the wiki then. First copying current wiki descriptions to the .po file and if anything must change reflect that in the wiki too.

Yup just add the appropriate string ID into the help="<stringid>" attribute of a <setting> and it will automatically be used by the GUI when pressing the "I" button. Like I said the GUI integration could do with some love. Either doing it the same way as in OE or at least improving the current integration which requires a button press.

aye, we could even run an automated python script to update the wiki from the .po file.

I really like this suggestion. Great idea

IIRC the context sensitive help has already been brought up some time ago (devcon?) - nice to see some movement in that direction
As for the string IDs - do we still required integer IDs or couldn't we just do something like "setting.foo.label", "setting.foo.description". I know those could become rather long, but self explaining string IDs wouldn't require additional documentation in the PO files.

I am about 1/3 of adding the descriptions now so should be finished tomorrow for the mayor part. Of course some will be missing but they can be added later on.

Would be nice if Jezz_X or ronie could take a look at improving the description window.

PR done:
PR2717

Discussion for the used strings:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=164407
This to not spam github/devs.

(2013-05-08, 19:22)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ]As for the string IDs - do we still required integer IDs or couldn't we just do something like "setting.foo.label", "setting.foo.description". I know those could become rather long, but self explaining string IDs wouldn't require additional documentation in the PO files.

The IDs are still needed. I am working on plurals support first. Soon I'll make a PR. After that, we can consider moving away from IDs, but since it can be done in a few different ways, I will open up a big discussion on it later.

Would it be possible to add a line or put "Description:" for the description box? Right now it blends in with the other settings text a bit too much. Needs more separation.

this could also be handled visually e.g. by adding a little info icon or something