[Konsole-devel] [Bug 162461] Please, disable profile inheritance

[fexpop at onlinehome.de]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162461         




------- Additional Comments From fexpop onlinehome de  2008-05-23 11:15 -------
Hi Robert,

Robert Knight wrote:
> ------- Additional Comments From robertknight gmail com  2008-05-22 18:38 -------
>> A profile should be an isolated set of settings! 
> 
> I disagree.  I think it is useful not to have to change a setting in every profile if you decide that you want to make a global change.  


Well, I disagree with you again. A global change shoud not be achieved 
by profile inheritance. There could be something like "Change Multiple 
Profiles" in which you can choose the set of profiles you want to change.

The only time when settings should be directly inherited from the parent 
profile is when you create a new profile. Every setting should be taken 
from the current profile.

Any inheritance from the parent at a later time will lead to 
unpredictable and often unwanted side effects.

Here's another example:

You have one profile "Parent" with say 7 children. One month later you 
decide to change the font in Child2 and Child4 and the font size in 
Child6, Child1 and Child3.

Since you didn't actually call the profiles "Child[1-7]" in the course 
of the next year you forget about the parent-child relationship of the 
profiles.

Then some day you want to change the font and font size in Parent and 
_only_ in Parent. With profile inheritance you'll be confused to find 
out that you have to re-adjust the font in some of the children andt the 
font size in others. In other words, instead of just adjusting the 
font/fontsize in only one profile you put yourself in a position where 
you have to

1. Find out which profiles were affected
2. Find out what settings of the child profiles were affected
3. Readjust settings in 7 child profiles (not to mention the grand and 
grand-grand children) - (BTW, would you know the font you used before?)

A lot of collateral damage, don't you think?

> The UI does not currently make the inheritance explicit and I think it should.



If you can come up with a proper GUI representation of the profile 
inheritance I'm on your side. But I can hardly imagine how this could be 
achieved in a user friendly manner.

A proper UI representation should be able to display which profiles 
inherits which settings from which profile.

Essentially, you would need something like an inheritance tree view for 
every single setting, since not every setting is inherited from a 
parent. A little complicated, isn't it?

IMO, you're better off introducing something like "Change Multiple 
Profiles" or "Apply Changes Globally" or "Apply Changes to multiple 
profiles".

Kind regards,

Felix