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Gripes

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glupie
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Gripes

Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:23 pm
First of all, I am going to apologize in advance for what I
know will sound like yet another whiny screed from someone
who has never posted before. I only recently discovered
ktorrent, and I do appreciate its many features (and all of
the work it took to get the project where it is now). I will
also make a second apology in case some of my complaints
stem from my own ignorance.

I (even more recently) upgraded from 2.2.8 to the version
3 series (basically 3.2.5 now). This brought a number of
disappointments. First of all, the bandwidth scheduler seems
much harder to use now - primarily setting it up (very easy
in the version 2 series), but even more important, I can't
find an easy way of turning it off temporarily (which also
was very easy in the version 2 series - a direct "enable" in
the configuration dialogs). Turning the plugin off has no
effect. Also (quite strangely), simply checking a box for a
plugin in the configuration dialog alters the interface for
its activation without requiring any further confirmation -
the "apply" button appears permanently grayed out, and the
"cancel" button doesn't cancel - it merely closes the dialog
box, as if one had pressed the "ok" button.

My second major area of frustration concerns the info widget
plugin. Does some way exist to remove some of the columns
in the "peers" tab. I don't have an interest in all of them,
and I would like to remove a few so that everything will fit
in the width of the window (I believe that version 3 added a
couple of new fields). Version 3 also (unfortunately, in my
opinion) stopped sorting the ip addresses (also in the peers
tab) correctly. It now, for example, puts 200.0.0.1 ahead of
21.0.0.1 (ugh!).

II did try version 3.3-rc1, but it was completely unusable.
The program kept taking up an increasing amount of cpu, and
would always crash after a few hours of use. Also, regarding
3.3, I noticed that the program did reverse dns lookups for
peers, and reports them (where possible) by name rather than
by ip address. For those (including me) with poor network
connectivity, it seems like a complete waste of bandwidth
(meaning that it doesn't accomplish anything useful), and
again takes up an excessive amount of width on the display.
I consider this more important than anything else I have
mentioned, and strongly request a way for users to disable
this.

Thank you for all of your work on ktorrent, and especially
for any consideration you might give my criticism.
George
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Re: Gripes

Sun Nov 08, 2009 4:26 pm
curmudgeon wrote:I (even more recently) upgraded from 2.2.8 to the version
3 series (basically 3.2.5 now). This brought a number of
disappointments. First of all, the bandwidth scheduler seems
much harder to use now - primarily setting it up (very easy
in the version 2 series), but even more important, I can't
find an easy way of turning it off temporarily (which also
was very easy in the version 2 series - a direct "enable" in
the configuration dialogs).


What is so difficult about setting it up ? The old 2.2 interface was pretty limited, seeing that you could only work with hours, so changing it to support minutes required a complete redesign.

As for disabling it temporarely, that it is something we should add.

Turning the plugin off has no
effect.


It seems we are not restoring the normal limits when the plugin is unloaded, will fix that before 3.3 is released.

Also (quite strangely), simply checking a box for a
plugin in the configuration dialog alters the interface for
its activation without requiring any further confirmation -
the "apply" button appears permanently grayed out, and the
"cancel" button doesn't cancel - it merely closes the dialog
box, as if one had pressed the "ok" button.


Moot point, plugin selection is no longer in the settings dialog.


My second major area of frustration concerns the info widget
plugin. Does some way exist to remove some of the columns
in the "peers" tab. I don't have an interest in all of them,
and I would like to remove a few so that everything will fit
in the width of the window (I believe that version 3 added a
couple of new fields). Version 3 also (unfortunately, in my
opinion) stopped sorting the ip addresses (also in the peers
tab) correctly. It now, for example, puts 200.0.0.1 ahead of
21.0.0.1 (ugh!).


Making the peers tab column configurable is on the TODO list. Getting back to the old IP address sorting is problematic because you can now also have hostnames and IPv6 addresses in that column.

II did try version 3.3-rc1, but it was completely unusable.
The program kept taking up an increasing amount of cpu, and
would always crash after a few hours of use.


That is fixed

Also, regarding
3.3, I noticed that the program did reverse dns lookups for
peers, and reports them (where possible) by name rather than
by ip address. For those (including me) with poor network
connectivity, it seems like a complete waste of bandwidth
(meaning that it doesn't accomplish anything useful), and
again takes up an excessive amount of width on the display.
I consider this more important than anything else I have
mentioned, and strongly request a way for users to disable
this.


Settings -> Advanced -> Resolve hostnames of peers
glupie
Registered Member
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Re: Gripes

Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:37 am
What is so difficult about setting it up ? The old 2.2 interface was pretty limited, seeing that you could only work with hours, so changing it to support minutes required a complete redesign.


I just had a terrible time with it. Clicking in a box with a schedule seems to randomly move either the start time or end time to that moment (but only on that day - not on all of the days set up together). I also liked the old color scheme better (yes, I know I can change it). It's far from intuitive what "drag and drop" (something I don't think much of anyway) does. I do have schedules for every hour of the week (and sometimes trying to change something gave me an error message about something already scheduled at the "new" time).

I do appreciate the desire to support minutes (even though it is not something I care about at all).

As for disabling it temporarely, that it is something we should add.

It seems we are not restoring the normal limits when the plugin is unloaded, will fix that before 3.3 is released.


Fixing/restoring that would be great

Making the peers tab column configurable is on the TODO list


I am sure I don't understand the difficulty of this. My gut reaction is something like "well, why can't you just copy the code from the torrents window?"

Getting back to the old IP address sorting is problematic because you can now also have hostnames and IPv6 addresses in that column.


I (as stated before) don't think much of the idea of putting hostnames there. I didn't consider the possibility of mixing IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Actually, it is not that difficult (just choose to do something like list all of the IPv4 addresses and then the IPv6 addresses), but I can understand why it would not exactly be a high priority. :)

That is fixed


Only in the repository? Will there be an rc2 (I would try that)? Any guesses on a release date for 3.3?

Settings -> Advanced -> Resolve hostnames of peers


I completely missed that. Sorry.

Thank you for your long and detailed reply.


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