[APBeta] 2.0a7 -- Hooray, it works!

[Paul Rodman]

On Jun 16, 2008, at 15:40 , Michael Portuesi wrote:

>
> On Jun 16, 2008, at 3:30 PM, Paul Rodman wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 16, 2008, at 14:12 , Robin Lauryssen-Mitchell wrote:
>>
>>> Make it user selectable in Preferences?
>>
>> I'm trying to remove stuff from Preferences :^)  I'd rather get it  
>> to work the way the majority of folk would expect.
>>
>> Paul R.
>
>
> I'm glad to hear that.  With AP 1.x, I've encountered a few  
> situations where the program just behaved in some counter-intuitive  
> way, only to discover there's a preference who's default is set the  
> wrong way.
>
> I understand why that happens, but really I'd vote more in favor of  
> removing stuff from Preferences than adding more to it.
>
> Also, with 1.x, sometimes things that should be adjusted on a per- 
> plan or per-session basis would be squirreled away in Preferences.   
> For instance, the FOV tab in 1.x has "Preferences" for displaying  
> planets, sun, moon, comets, etc.  This creates a usability trap  
> because people expect those controls to be on the main FOV tab.
>
> Preferences really should be for things you set once and then  
> "forget" for most of your time with AP.

A lot of preferences (in fact most of them) appeared along the way, as  
the need arose. The reason they were preferences rather than hard- 
wired changes was to avoid users seeing their functionality change  
without warning. This also had the side effect that the default  
setting was often the least-likely-to-be-desired one.

Other preferences were there for performance reasons (e.g. the high- 
precision planet calcs made a significant difference in response on  
slower computers). However, now I will just do away with these as the  
computer speed nowadays makes it moot.

I will be removing various options during the alpha phase (including  
the FOV display ones you mention above).

Paul R.