Re: A Violent Realisation [Was: Preferences]

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

Dick Porter <dick ximian com> writes:

> Hinderances to tinkering would include no "Undo" or "Revert" button on
> instant-apply preference dialogs (if that really is intentional and not just
> not-yet-implemented.)

Undo is really hard, and in some cases is pretty undefined.  For
example, how do I undo installing a theme.  What happens when my actions
are based upon an outside change (capplets[1] no longer exist in a
vacuum.) I'd love to have undo in the capplets, and am planning on
taking them in that direction.  However, I'd rather get them all
working, the backend functional, and have them all look somewhat
reasonable before investing a lot of time in getting this to work.  Of
course, a patch to start doing this would be gratefully accepted. (-;

In the interim, we're trying to minimize to as small as possible, the
number of 'catastrophic' settings so you can always unset what you've
done, even if you can't go back exactly.  I feel like we've done a
pretty good job thus far[2], though we would always appreciate comments
where we can do better.

Thanks
-Jonathan[3]

[1] Technically, capplets don't exist
[2] Amusingly enough, one of the biggest problems we have outside the
    lefthanded mouse option is the accessibility page.  Those features are
    scary, and not to be used lightly.
[3] Attempting to match Iain in footnote usage