The GUI now supports multiple levels of settings, advanced being one of them.
It would make more sense to include all possible "advancedsettings" settings in the gui (advanced level), and get rid of the advancedsettings.xml file entirely.
Apart from making more sense, it makes it a lot more user friendly as all settings can then be handled from within the GUI not having to touch any XML files which is not trivial on portables and things like AppleTV.
Disagree completely.
If you put every option in the gui it becomes ridiculously bloated.
People will fiddle. Because that's what they do.
And how hard can it be to edit / move an .xml file?
(2016-06-30, 10:12)trogggy Wrote: [ -> ]Disagree completely.
If you put every option in the gui it becomes ridiculously bloated.
People will fiddle. Because that's what they do.
And how hard can it be to edit / move an .xml file?
Not have the GUI become bloated is a matter of using a good structure in the GUI.
For non technical users editing an xml file on their mobile/AppleTV can be really challenging.
I find that some settings in the advancedsettings are not advanced at all (mysql to name one).
To me it looks like advancedsettings.xml has been piling up additional feature settings that would not be required for the masses whose technical devs couldn't care less to also add GUI support for their new feature.
Maybe you haven't looked close enough but advanced settings are actually already being chopped out when obsolete. I will for sure not agree with throwing every advancedsetting in the GUI as it's simply stupid to do so no matter what GUI design you make.
I agree, though it is a nice option for things like regex and anything that would be hard to cut/paste into the Kodi GUI, since not all platforms can do that or have a desktop to copy the log text strings from. At the very least, the various toggles can be put in the GUI (if still needed, etc).
There are some settings like regex which only make sense in an xml file (nobody is entering their regex settings with a FireTV remote one character at a time). My issue is that MySQL specifically should be moved out of the advancedsettings.xml and turned into a GUI option. It's annoying to have to copy this over to every new device via the file manager. Some of the other "advanced settings" aren't really that advanced and would fit fine in the Advanced area of the GUI settings.
I'm genuinely confused as to how it takes you less time to input things via the gui than to move one file.
Is it really that hard to move a file onto an Apple tv? I use windows, openelec, libreelec, android and sticking a new advancedsettings.xml on any of them from my pc takes seconds.
If you have a MySQL server and a lot of Kodi-devices it is annoying to enter all the MySQL-details on each and every device. It is easier to setup the first client and then replicate that setup to all the others. Currently the 'replication'' step involves manual file-copying that can be a bit tricky since you need to figure out what and how to copy which is not entirely easy.
Perhaps a better solution is some built-in replication-step that allows one Kodi to 'auto-replicate' some settings from another Kodi on the LAN that the user points it to? The stuff in sources.xml is also a candidate to consider then, and stuff in wakeonlan.xml and maybe some other I am not aware of.
The only real missing thing, that was asked a few times is read / write of the content of AS.xml from JSON.
This would allows simple tools to replicate the settings at will, bypassing those that are device specific and allow a lot more things to happens.
But it seems in the mind of the some people AS.xml is bad
(2016-07-15, 12:59)Tolriq Wrote: [ -> ]The only real missing thing, that was asked a few times is read / write of the content of AS.xml from JSON.
This would allows simple tools to replicate the settings at will, bypassing those that are device specific and allow a lot more things to happens.
But it seems in the mind of the some people AS.xml is bad
i second this request.
searching for info on accessing via rpc and now i know its not possible...
Agreed with troggy and t4_ravenbird - makes no sense to force people to add in these settings via a GUI
If anything - more settings in files to aid faster rebuilds / deployments is a win!
perhaps tolriq and my request is not related to the specific discussion.
Regardless of how or where such settings end up, we would like that to be accessible via jsonrpc.
There is a stack of stuff that can be done via advancedsettings.xml that in my opinion wouldn't translate easily to a GUI. On top of that, AS.xml is the ONLY way to get Kodi into debugging mode if there are GUI issues and/or it is crashing before the GUI appears.
As to replicating MySQL settings over multiple machines, this is just a simple copy/paste surely?? Obviously other settings in AS.xml may or may not be needed by other target machines but I do not see that as a reason to remove it and try and move everything to the GUI. AS is one of the things that makes Kodi so flexible. IMHO removing it would be a retrograde step, either losing many features or making such a complicated GUI settings screen(s) that people would become confused with the mass of options.
With regards to advanced settings.xml with mySQL settings I personally find it much more convenient to only have to drop that file onto a device and reboot it to get it to connect. Unless the GUI had an import /export function to enable this same ability I would never support moving this to GUI.
1) AdvancedSettings.xml has far, far, far to many things that could be entered into it to ever make it work in a GUI.
2) The sheer amount of things you can do with AdvanceSettings.xml is one of Kodi's greatest strengths, it may not be the most user friendly but it gives a huge amount of flexibility for the tinkerer.