wiki:PrefsUnification

Version 1 (modified by davea, 9 years ago) (diff)

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Unifying Web and GUI Prefs

Currently the Web and GUI preferences interfaces control the same set of prefs (with some exceptions, see below) but describe them differently, which creates confusion among volunteers. For example, web prefs say

Suspend work while computer is in use?

While the GUI says

Computing allowed while the computer is in use

These could be called "negative" (when not to compute) and "positive" (when to compute) respectively.

Negative:

Compute all the time, except when the computer is in use, OR the CPU load is > .25, OR the time is between 9:00 and 17:00.

Positive:

Compute whenever the computer is not in use AND the CPU load is < .25 AND the time is between 17:00 and 9:00.

Which is clearer and more intuitive? It's kind of a toss-up, except that I think that it's slightly more natural to express time-of-day and time-of-week prefs positively. So let's go with positive across the board.

However, we need to say things precisely. The current GUI wording (positive) is imprecise in two ways:

  • It doesn't explicitly say whether computing is allowed when the computer is not in use.
  • It says that computing is allowed whenever the computer is in use, which is not the case; other preferences might disallow computing.

More precise wording would be:

  • Run CPU tasks when all the following hold:
    • the computer is plugged in, not running on batteries (laptops only)
    • the computer is idle
    • the time of day is between X and Y
    • other CPU usage is less then X%
  • Run GPU tasks if the above conditions hold, and
    • the computer is idle [this can be disabled if the CPU idle setting is set]
  • "Idle" means no mouse or keyboard input in last X minutes