[Wine] How can we improve WNE?

[Austin English]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 10:03 PM, man_in_shack <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
>
> austin987 wrote:
>>
>> No, sorry, disagreed there. I don't think that graphics settings are
>> any more special than any other wine configuration settings.
>>
>
>
> Changing VideoMemorySize does nothing but hide other bugs (which I hear are being worked on). Changing OffscreenRenderingMode can cause a lot of problems with a wide variety of apps, everything from "textures are broken" to "complete crash of Wine and it took the buggy video drivers with it".

VideoMemorySize I'll agree with you on. If that is left in the
registry, I won't disagree.

OffscreenRenderingMode, however, is a fickle beast, and depending on
the application, fixes tons of problems, or yes, causes random
crashes. But as I've said, the same can be said for native dlls
(comctl32/dcom98 are especially bad here). We don't play the
babysitter for most other settings (only _really_ dangerous ones,
e.g., changing C:\ to point to a windows install, or running with
sudo). Changing the OffscreenRenderingMode is no more dangerous than a
native DLL, and IMHO deserves no special treatment just because it's a
graphic setting rather than a DLL setting.

Long story short, I see a lot of hypocrisy in the argument that
"changing graphics settings can cause crashes/bugs, we can't allow
that" and "here, change DLL load order to native, even for native Wine
programs. No warning needed, you're smart enough to figure that out."
Winecfg exists to make changing Wine settings easier on users. There
is _nothing_ in winecfg that can't be done in the registry or
elsewhere (the drives must be done via terminal/file manager). If we
want to protect users from changing Wine, then remove winecfg. Until
that's done, there _is no_ merit in saying that we shouldn't allow
changing graphics settings. Again, I _know_ that progress is close to
it not being needed. The same was said with the ddraw rewrite, which,
even though it is nearly 3 years old, still has regressions. Winecfg
is there to make adjustments easier on users, graphics tweaks are
typically needed for games, and allowing changing those settings makes
sense.

Working in #winehq/the forums a lot, I've got a bit less of a
developer mentality. While I see both sides of the argument, I get the
feeling many developers forget that users are using Wine to get work
done/play their game/use their application. What's in the future is
unimportant. They simply want to use it now. If we want to encourage
that, like already do by including winecfg, then there's no reason we
shouldn't add these graphics tweaks. If not, then remove winecfg, or
even remove the tweaks that can be dangerous, to eliminate the
hypocrisy.

-- 
-Austin