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Re: Usability features branches

 

On 09/16/2013 02:52 PM, Niels Huylebroeck wrote:
    For the rest, it might be better to put them in extra modules and offer a
    configuration interface similar to v7's "Settings" checkboxes, possibly via
    an index module, as Niels suggests. But you should watch out for
    updatability - a stable series ideally requires modules to be frozen at the
    data model level, and this won't be the case if you need to add an extra
    column in the settings model whenever you add a "tweak" module.


The idea would be that this is a TransientModel thus model stability should
matter very little correct ?

No, TransientModels are database-backed (for statelessness reasons) so it does matter as much as for regular Models.


    Perhaps you could do this via a module naming convention or module category
    naming convention? Let's say your "index module" adds an extra Settings
    page: it could dynamically generate checkboxes to install any local module
    that matches the given prefix or belongs to the special category. The
    module summary and [sub]category could be sufficient to present a
    meaningful config page without actually needing to install the modules, and
    without changing the actual data model when a new module is available.
    It sounds like a lot of overhead to manage a few tweaks, though.

Naming conventions are a pain, subjective and do not reflect the idea behind a
module very efficiently. Nor do users know what to look for if they are not
familiar with OpenERP terminology.

I don't see why auto-detecting modules that belong to a special predefined category would represent an issue, either for user-friendliness or for conveying the module's meaning (implementation detail?). Actually that's what the accounting system does to detect the available chart of accounts: any module that belongs to the "Localization/Account Charts" category will be dynamically added to the selection box.
Anyway, that was just a random idea.. ;-)


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