jsmorley wrote: ↑May 4th, 2020, 12:30 am
I'm sorry, but 99.99% of all authors and users would simply say "why in the world would I need that?"
Might be nice if you were cranking out 10 skins a day or something I guess. I'm just not a big fan of these ideas to automate or simplify writing a skin. It's really not that much repetitive work, and I'm perfectly fine with carefully and lovingly hand-crafting a skin. Automation is really the only way to make M&M's, not really the highest priority for making a Stradivarius.
I'm not saying it's a "bad" idea, not at all. I'm simply saying it's an "unimportant" idea. Just my personal opinion, I'm one voice of many.
One might also say that it is a hideous, pointless, Rube Goldberg of a solution in a vain search for a problem. You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment.
And how would you know what "99.99% of all authors and users" need, want or believe? The way I see it by browsing on the forum is that 99.99% of the more or less valid and useful suggestions by those "99.99% of all authors and users" get ignored or, in the best case scenario, finally get implemented after a year or so and constant pushing for the addition of that feature. The majority argument is never good to justify or to rate the quality or the usefullness of an idea, as 99.99% of the important things in this world (and in Rainmeter, in particular) come exactly from the 00.01% whose ideas you deem "unimportant" (see both the production and usage of Stradivarius, and there are literally thousands of similar examples - if folks always did what 99.99% of them thought, human race would still be in stone age to this day, for example).
Anyway, that's beside the point, as you'll either won't accept, understand or even care about these realities. I'll just say that I expected this answer (well, actually, I didn't expect any answer, if not for Active Colors reply, LOL), even though I gave my best shot to make it as trivial to implement (and accept) as possible. The suggestion is just as valid as
#CURRENTSECTION# for the simple reason that they are (or would be) similar in usage and implementation. One idea gets done probably without even asking, the other is ignored and refused cause it comes from the so called 00.01% of the user base. If all developers would think like that, nothing would ever get done, as all suggestions initially come from a single individual (so the 99.99% argument of stagnation is always going to be easy to bring up into the conversation). Pfff...
The funny thing is that on
another thread you said that, and I quote:
jsmorley wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 6:38 pmI think tips and tricks for how you can
simplify your code, make it more readable, use better naming conventions, whatever are GREAT.
but on this, it's the exact opposite:
jsmorley wrote: ↑May 4th, 2020, 12:30 amI'm just not a big fan of these ideas to automate or
simplify writing a skin.
What could be the cause of this sudden change of opinions, I wonder? Oh, yeah, I think I got it: on both the other thread and this one you rallied to the idea that required no change whatsoever to the current features of Rainmeter. It's not even about the "99.99% of all authors and users" that alledgedly share your opinion, backwards compatibility (100% in this case), impact on performance (0% in this case), a fundamental change in how Rainmeter works (not even a question here), it's simply a matter of having to add one or two lines of code to Rainmeter. I understand the limited time resources of the developers, and more or less agree with the idea that the repetitive work is not that hard (
not that it's not that much such work, as you suggested though, which is false), but what I can't understand is why features that are so simple to get done (and so obviously beneficial) are rejected. I won't even ask about my other suggestion regarding merging layouts, since this one which is infinitely easier to add is dismissed.
I'll end up with a quote from Brian
here:
Brian wrote: ↑April 23rd, 2020, 9:01 amI don't think any of the developers are against some sort of "dynamically created objects" or "repeating section creation" per se, I just think we haven't seen any idea that an average user can follow easily.
-Brian
No kidding?! How about this one, LOL? It checks all the boxes, don't you think? Dead easy to understand for the regular user, no breaking of the INI format, no Rainmeter rewriting needed, no backwards compatibility issues, no impact on performance, no hard work implementing it, etc. - just a simple built-in variable, available in Rainmeter. The answer is of course: no, can't do. The "99.99%" of the folks who simply adore replicating slightly different sections in their skins (sarcasm gently inserted here) surely must disagree with this "hideous", "Rube Goldberg" idea, LMAO...
P.S. By the way, this doesn't automate things as you claimed. It only helps in avoiding having to modify a single variable or whatever, in each similar section you're copy pasting in the skins. You'd still have to modify it in the section's name, of course, but at least that's only a single modification required in every section.