Good thoughts Craig. I see the wisdom is
keeping the template user editable. The device editing extension point seems
pretty flexible and a vendor can do lots with it. The challenge is to try to maintain
some consistency across vendor implementations so that users do not get too confused.
One hybrid approach is to dynamically
change the template string as the user changes vendor-specific fields from
empty to new values. That is, add new arguments to the template. This addresses
the problem of an emulator complaining about an empty argument while we do not want
to force a user to fill in fields they don’t care about. Of course, it is
no longer a “template” then.
Conceptually, I think there is a bit of a design
conflict between offering fields for entering values and a template that can be
edited. But it is a very minor issue that likely does not need addressing.
Cheers,
Jon
From: dsdp-mtj-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:dsdp-mtj-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Craig Setera
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:31
PM
To: Mobile Tools for The Java
Platform mailing list
Subject: Re: [dsdp-mtj-dev] Launch
Command Template
Hey Jon,
This was meant to be editable. There are a couple of reasons I did things
this way originally:
1) I had no backing from device manufacturers, so it was a lot of guesswork on
my part. If I did not get something right, users could alter things on
their own.
2) Related to that, it was possible for users to experiment and try to add new
devices that I hadn't considered.
This is obviously a very low-level user interface It has been a (long)
while since I've spent any time in that part of the code, but I believe that
that is one particular implementation of the device editor extension
point. Thus, it is fully replaceable on a device-by-device basis. I
think there are a few potential options I can see going forward:
1) Leave things as is. Have your user interface work the same way as what
is already there.
2) Look for a better generic approach that works well for all device
vendors. Perhaps it is as simple as moving the ability to alter the
command line to some "Details" page somewhere and make it less
prominent.
3) Leave things as is for the core, but have your devices with your own device
edit pages.
4) Some combination of approaches.
I guess what it boils down to is that I think what is available right now could
be handled much better in the general case and is something we should probably
consider what improvements we could make. I do think that it is something
that you should consider looking for device-specific improvements as
well. Finally, this might be a place to further break down the available
functionality so it can be consumed in pieces as necessary.
Just a few thoughts.
Craig
Jon Dearden wrote:
To
my fellow “Mobile Fools for Java” J
Can someone tell me what the intended use is of the
launch Command Template in the device definition dialog? Is it intended to be
manually edited by the user
The reason I ask is that I may want to have *many* settings for an emulator. Dozens.
Ideally, these settings appear on additional tabs on the dialog with lots of
user-friendly default values, prompts, and data validation. The emulator may
not require all values to be passed into it, but it may complain if you pass in
a parameter name without a value. I don’t want to force the user to enter
something just because a launch template has a replaceable parameter for it.
For example, if the user does not want to enter a phone number but the template
includes “/phone=%number%”, you send the emulator
/phone=”” and it may throw up and error and not launch.
So it comes down to this. Do we expect the user to
manually edit the template? It could be made read-only and presented below the
tab panel. Changes in the tabbed page fields could be reflected real-time in
the launch command below. That’s just an idea.
Another option is to keep the template simple, then
add additional parameters programmatically and hidden from the user. But that
could hide errors.
As a vendor, I would want to be careful to do things
“the MTJ way”.
Cheers,
Jon
---
Senior Software Developer, Eclipse Tools
Research In Motion
905-629-4746 x15333 / Mobile:
519 500-23167
jdearden@xxxxxxx
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