Gale Andrews wrote:
I am not sure of the best way to build it on Mac, so I asked Leland.
Of course we can still post unofficial external reset apps for Mac and Linux on the Forum if developers don't want to officially distribute an external app. For my primitive effort on Mac, I used bash rm to delete audacity.cfg and sed for the version that only initialised cfg, but perhaps it should be done with Apple Script in case older Macs don't have support for rm and sed?
IMHO, I would feel uncomfortable if the Audacity Team Developers did not want it distributed. I do not believe that it needs to be shipped with Audacity as part of the "normal" distribution. In your bash script were you able to use code to determine the location of the configuration file? There's a small chance that sed might not exist but rm will certainly.
Gale Andrews wrote:
Testing your external app on Windows, would it be better to use the official Audacity icon with some kind of overlay suggesting reset?
The Help dialogue has a typo "About Reset Audacity's References". I don't know why we need the possessive "Audacity's" anywhere.
Since the buttons actually do delete files, perhaps they should say "Delete" and not "Reset", and only the Help dialogue gives explanation. If we want the external app to to delete audacity.cfg as opposed to reset it, then the "single button" patch to Preferences should also delete audacity.cfg, shouldn't it?
When I only reset pluginregistry.cfg in your external app, the same dialogue is given about resetting Audacity's preferences as with the other buttons, despite I am not resetting Preferences.
If I say "No" in the dialogue to confirm I want to reset Preferences, should the app quit? Perhaps the user wants to explore the other options in the app or look at the help?
In re. the icon: that is a QA/design decision for someone with more artistic skills than I. As long as it has some icon at this stage (alpha) that's all that is important as changing the artwork is simple.
In re. the typo: references versus preferences - sorry, my dictation software has a hard time with those.
In re. grammar: correct grammar usage suggests either "Audacity's preference file" or "the Audacity preference file"; I know that Connie has been convinced that the inconsequential "the" is not desirable but I have a very hard time being convinced <grin>.
In re. Delete versus Reset: the original design was to "reset" Audacity's configuration file to be completely empty with the exception of the "initialized" line. The design is in flux! If the application eventually has a single button which does nothing but emptying the configuration file (leaving a blank file or one with the initialize line) then Reset is correct. As I pointed out when I first presented the application it needs serious QA/wording review <grin>.
In re. different warning dialogs: until the design is finalized fine tuning the wording is not productive.
In re. clicking "No" - should close the app: IMHO no; after reading the warning, there is a good chance that the user will want to make a copy of the configuration file before deleting it. Keeping the App open might be convenient.
Maybe the app should have a button which opens the location of the configuration files in Windows Explorer/the equivalent Mac/Linux folder/directory Explorer. Maybe this application should be a Locator not a Deleter nor a Reseter.
