451025 - <preference> element needs to be usable even outside of a <prefpane> element

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

There might already be a bug on this, but I can't find it.

This is a regression from when the <preference> element was first introduced quite a while back (for FF1.5, as I recall). Not all apps that use preferences will include a separate dialog box with <prefpane>s in it as a user interface for modifying those prefs. Fennec is one example, and an app I wrote while with MDG is another.

Comment 1

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-1.diff

Comment 2

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-2.diff

forgot to update the patch before attaching it

Comment 3

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Comment on attachment 335258 [details] [diff] [review]
451025-2.diff

patch is incomplete

Comment 4

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-3w.diff

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Would be nice to get some tests for this (see e.g. http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/toolkit/content/tests/chrome/test_preferences.xul ).

Comment 6

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

good point, I'll see what I can come up with

Comment 7

[Neil Deakin]

Comment on attachment 335557 [details] [diff] [review]
451025-3w.diff

Don't remove properties that are defined for elements and are listed in the documentation.

Why do we need a separate new element here? Can't we just put all of the functionality in the <preferences> element directly?

Comment 8

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-4w.diff

Comment 9

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (From update of attachment 335557 [details] [diff] [review])
> Don't remove properties that are defined for elements and are listed in the
> documentation.

Done.

> Why do we need a separate new element here? Can't we just put all of the
> functionality in the <preferences> element directly?

Because it needs to listen for change events from the input controls (textboxes, checkboxes, etc) which means it needs to be an ancestor of those controls. Merging the prefmanager tag with the preferences tag would that everyone using these features would need to update their code, moving all of their input controls underneath their preferences tags.

Comment 10

[Neil Deakin]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Because it needs to listen for change events from the input controls
> (textboxes, checkboxes, etc) which means it needs to be an ancestor of those
> controls.

Why can't it just use an event listener?

Comment 11

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

xbl destructors are never called, so it would never get a chance to remove the listener.

Comment 12

[Neil Deakin]

With a few minor errors fixed, the following already works just fine:

<prefpane>
  <preferences>
    <preference id="browser.startup.homepage"
                name="browser.startup.homepage" type="wstring"/>
  </preferences>
  <textbox id="textbox" preference="browser.startup.homepage"/>
</prefpane>

It seems like we can just use <prefpane> here rather than using a new element.

Comment 13

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

No, I can't. The prefpane binding inserts a bunch of UI stuff that are specific to one particular app's preferences window in addition to handling the preferences attribtue. By splitting the prefpane into two elements, (called "prefpane" and "prefmanager") you can get the latter without having to swallow the former.

Comment 14

[Neil Deakin]

I'm not following. I can understand the prefwindow binding, but I don't see anything of note in the prefpane binding. There are a couple of properties and methods that might not be used, but I don't see an issue there.

Comment 15

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

erm. on looking at the file again, I see that you're right. I need to reexamine the symptoms to see exactly how to fix the prefpane binding. In the mean time, however, could I get a review on the change to the preference element? We need that at least for Fennec A1. That's just the second patch.

Comment 16

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-2.1.diff

fix a good review commend from Gavin.

Comment 17

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 342205 [details] [diff] [review]
451025-2.1.diff

>diff -r b222f6e972b3 toolkit/content/widgets/preferences.xml

>+      <property name="type">

>+            return "type" in doc && doc.type

missing semi-colon, and should probably return doc.type || ""; to match the default prefwindow behavior (missing attribute).

>+      <property name="instantApply">

>+            return ("instantApply" in doc && doc.instantApply) || rootBranch.getBoolPref("browser.preferences.instantApply")

I prefer explicit references to |this| (also missing a semi-colon). Shouldn't need the "in" check anymore either.

Should mark these readonly I guess (even though it doesn't seem to affect settability without a setter defined).

r=me with those.

Comment 18

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-2.2.diff

patch to be checked in

Comment 19

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-2.3.diff

forgot one nit in the last patch

Comment 20

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

Attachment: 451025-2.4.diff

/me sighs. perhaps this one will be acceptable?

Comment 21

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 342505 [details] [diff] [review]
451025-2.4.diff

this is perfectly acceptable, minus the changes to js/src/jsdtoa.cpp! :)

Comment 22

[Daniel Brooks [:db48x]]

lol. I completely forgot to leave those out.

Comment 23

[Neil Deakin]

This should be fixed, no?

Comment 25

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

This landed on Thu Oct 09 16:16:10 2008 -0700:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?changeset=3fe2918df533
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3fe2918df533