"Defaults" button in every settings screen

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:53:07 -0500
Michael Orlitzky <michael at orlitzky.com> wrote:

> On 12/09/2011 08:39 PM, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> > On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:30:51 -0500
> > Michael Orlitzky<michael at orlitzky.com>  wrote:
> >
> >> On 12/09/2011 05:05 PM, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Even with a "restore defaults" button there would still be
> >>> problems:
> >>>
> >>>     * If the user doesn't know what caused a dialog to render
> >>> off-screen, how would he know where to restore defaults - in the
> >>> app the dialog belongs to or in Xfce?
> >>
> >> If he was playing around with him XFCE settings and not the app
> >> settings the day before, when it was working, that would be a clue.
> >
> > A user with such a good memory would perhaps also remember which
> > options he touched, don't you think? :P
> >
> 
> You give me too much credit! If I ever accidentally change my theme, 
> I'll never be able to figure out which one I like ever again =)
> 
> More seriously (also a true story), let's say I changed the "minimum 
> size to trigger smart placement slider" in the WM tweaks dialog. A
> week later, when I go to open something big, it opens in the wrong
> place. I know which setting I changed, but what was it originally set
> to? I think it was set to one-and-a-half fingernail-widths from the
> left, but in reality, it should be four-thirds of a bottle cap from
> the right.
> 
> I don't immediately know which one I want: after I change it, I would 
> have to go open every application and document that I could
> conceivably use to see if it works how it used to.

Ok, and you would fix that by reverting *all* your WM tweaks options
back to default? Then something else doesn't work as before and
suddenly you realize that you had changed some other option to have a
value that was just perfect for you but now you don't remember what it
was! This can happen, it doesn't have to, but it can. And that's what I
meant by arguing that the default state may be far, far away from what
you really want in that situation.

  - Jannis