Just a quick idea. Would it be possible for a sticky thread controlled by the mods, or their assigned surrogates that would keep a list of the roms that would ease comparisons between them? Possibly with a spreadsheet-like file that would contain version formats, features, etc side by side. As developers create new roms or change existing ones, they could pm those in charge who could make changes to the thread. Discussions would be held elsewhere, this would be fact-based only. Just a thought. I am happy to donate my time to the cause.
There are periodic posts that come along with polls of the latest rom, but the problem is that roms are frequently coming out...I understand that this would be a nice feature, because if you disappear from the forums for even a month you are lost with what has happened since then...if anything I just look at the posts and weigh the comments to see if the rom is good or not...lol there are also stars by a post that hint at its performance...anyways good luck with your request...
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What I mean is, it seems to me that it would be more efficient to put any/all files that may be upgraded as packages and instead of flashing cooked roms, we could flash a generic rom and uninstall old/reinstall new packages
Am I making sense to anyone?
I understand you
I believe this is part of what chefs who create "lite" or "unbloated" or "clean" or "naked" (in Garmin's ROMs) are trying to achieve.
I personally like the idea, and hope we see more of them.
My personal favorite ROM of all time was the very first Hyperdragon III
mbarvian said:
I understand you
I believe this is part of what chefs who create "lite" or "unbloated" or "clean" or "naked" (in Garmin's ROMs) are trying to achieve.
I personally like the idea, and hope we see more of them.
My personal favorite ROM of all time was the very first Hyperdragon III
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Up until recently the problem has been that cooks either created loaded ROMs with tons of stuff added to them, or lite ROMs, where they stripped this out.
The issue was however that it is quite easy to strip things out of a ROM. Making CAB packages out of those stripped out files however can be one of the more time consuming tasks and cooks didn't always offer those packages. In addition, CABs which were made available from other sources weren't always packaged in entirety and wouldn't always install.
Cooks have been getting better at this recently however. My new set of ROMS follows these concepts precisely:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=429117
I have been calling and advocating for this too basically since the dawn of UC
Previously I didn't post much under different nick, but I have "put up together" this concept in THIS thread finally, albeit with somewhat misleading "temporary" title, but it is good discussion if anyone is interested.
Granted, few apps have to be cooked-in in order to function properly, but those are really just very few. But as you can read there, most objections against this kind of "real lite" ROMs (where any "upgraedable apps" are NOT cooked-in) come from people who don't understand it, or don't know much about UC or Sashimi (BTW I'm for UC rather than Sashimi because UC is much easier for any newbies), or just don't know/have no clue how it works and are affraid it would make troubles to them if they don't have the same apps cooked-in.
Perhaps any of you could add your input there, since there isn't much sense in starting new thread about basically same thing.
Bengalih, I will test your ROMs with pleasure when I have bit m,ore time (or actually a second Kaiser would be great ).
But I can already give you my sincere congratulations now if you have created such ROMs
I have made ROM based on hang.tuah's ROMeOS (it was going to be an update, but ended in another ROM, LOL - not quite "lite" as I would want it, but I can't change the things that were "always there" now ). I try to steer its users into UC and use "extended packs" for things like dialers, comm managers etc. They'll have best proof that "cooked-in" is *worse* than "installed" soon, when they will have i.e. choice of Opal or Kaiser dialer in the extended pack - which obviously would be impossible if the dialer was cooked-in in the ROM...
@bengalih: your post is what got me to thinking about this again
I'm happy to see that you others share my attitude towards efficiency
I have not completely read thru both of your threads but I suppose what needs to be done is to create a universal standard
The way I see it, this type of system would be beneficial to cooks and end users alike. End users need a minimal variety of options to install these collections and a minimal variety of each basic rom release to install the collections to. Cooks need a simple system to adhere to that requires no more work to put together their collections than the current amount of work they do to create their roms.
Here is a sample proposal (what I'm thinking right now with a minimal knowledge of rom cooking )
A base rom of each flavor could be made available to download. By each flavor, I mean a different rom with each combination of files that must be cooked in to work. I haven't read anything like that before so if there are more than a couple combinations then no more than 4-5 with typcal combinations should be considered.
I need to do some reasearch to learn what benefits and/or caveats are associated with UC and Sashimi. I suppose cooks should be the ones to decide whether to make their collection(s) combatible one installer or the other.
selyb said:
@bengalih: your post is what got me to thinking about this again
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In the future it might just be best to post in the thread about this then. As a topic that has been tread over several times putting additional input into an existing thread would be more effective.
selyb said:
I have not completely read thru both of your threads but I suppose what needs to be done is to create a universal standard
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Perhaps you should read through the threads that are already out there before staring a new one that re-hashes the same information.
selyb said:
The way I see it, this type of system would be beneficial to cooks and end users alike. End users need a minimal variety of options to install these collections and a minimal variety of each basic rom release to install the collections to. Cooks need a simple system to adhere to that requires no more work to put together their collections than the current amount of work they do to create their roms.
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Good luck trying to get cooks to follow anything you propose. Not that it might not be a brilliant idea, but cooks are going to do their own thing. I decided to take matters into my own hands and cook my own ROMs according to the principles I thought best. I put the ROMs and my principles out there in hopes others will adopt them, but that's the best you can do...
selyb said:
A base rom of each flavor could be made available to download. By each flavor, I mean a different rom with each combination of files that must be cooked in to work. I haven't read anything like that before so if there are more than a couple combinations then no more than 4-5 with typcal combinations should be considered.
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Again, pretty much what I have done already with the HTC and AT&T official 6.1 releases. A base ROM for each with a set of CAB file to customize to your desires.
selyb said:
I need to do some reasearch to learn what benefits and/or caveats are associated with UC and Sashimi. I suppose cooks should be the ones to decide whether to make their collection(s) combatible one installer or the other.
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No offense, because I realize I am coming off a bit gruff in this post, but you do need to do alot of research. I agree with alot of what you are saying, but it has been said before (by myself and others). Also, there is no reason that a collection of CAB files wouldn't work with SASHIMI instead of UC or vice-versa. To your own admission, you don't understand how these installers work, but when you do your research you'll see that in essence they are both just installing CAB and XML files (and with SASHIMI the capability for much more).
Again, please don't take anything here as a personal attack. I can see that you are coming off of inspiration from my posts and I don't disagree with your basic ideas. However you will get better reception from all if you do these things:
1) Research what is out there before posting so you don't retread old ground.
2) Don't just "propose" ideas, put them into action. Even the best ideas are unlikely to be adopted unless you put effort into implementing them youself.
I say these to you for your own protection before someone not as nice as me begins to bash you for not doing research
Ok, well, I will quit posting to this thread before someone not so nice does come along.
selyb said:
Ok, well, I will quit posting to this thread before someone not so nice does come along.
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Heh... well seriously, take some time and learn more of what is currently out there and see where it is lacking.
I generally invite user feedback on my development projects. If you go back through the older threads, and take a look at what I am trying to do with my BRR ROMs, please feel free to comment in there about what additionally you would like to see and why.
Trust me, I very much welcome an open debate about what would be an effective way to do things. I just wanted to burst your bubble a little bit (seeing as you are a newer member) that your aspirations, although maybe valid, are most likely not going to get implemented by a majority of the cooks throughout the site.
I don't mean to shut down your thread, and you should continue posting if you see it as the best place to do so. I just feel that if you contribute to some existing projects that already have momentum then your ideas are more likely to get some attention.
The theme and apps sub-forum is getting pretty crowded. Is there any way we could separate it into two sub-forums? One for themes and one for apps?
No, I thinkk, it's just okay so.
I did a few themes and it works fine at XDA.
I wouldn't mind separating them... just my opinion.
It might seem ok now, but as theming gets a little easier, and the wealth of ROMs spread - it is going to get hard to find threads. I agree with having themes and apps separate.
drpfenderson said:
It might seem ok now, but as theming gets a little easier, and the wealth of ROMs spread - it is going to get hard to find threads. I agree with having themes and apps separate.
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+1 on that
+1 too, at the moment it is fine, but it will get worse overtime as more apps and more themes come out and more nexus one owners arrive
I sorta mentioned this in the cyan thread except I suggested different threads for each major release so it was easier to follow peoples' findings. Even with different sub forums for themes/apps/roms, sifting through 100s of pages to read what others are finding to see if an upgrade is right for you is a very daunting chore.
Any help with sorting though will make the user experience more digestible me thinks
+1 I made a topic about this earlier
more sub-forums, means more threads, more sub-threads under master-threads (for each release as suggested above) create even more threads, more threads create more confusion and more noobs posting "help I can't get root", "my phone lost root after nand restore", "my phone turned into bacon" in more threads and sub-threads then ever, making it even harder to navigate and find answers.
what XDA would really need is a tag cloud
+1 to that as well.
+1 for split.
shmigao said:
more sub-forums, means more threads, more sub-threads under master-threads (for each release as suggested above) create even more threads, more threads create more confusion and more noobs posting "help I can't get root", "my phone lost root after nand restore", "my phone turned into bacon" in more threads and sub-threads then ever, making it even harder to navigate and find answers.
what XDA would really need is a tag cloud
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Unless you can tag specific posts as the starting off point for certain releases (CM5b1 starts at post 25 in thread 1234 vs CM5stable4 starts at post 567 in thread 1234), a tag cloud wouldn't fix one particular issue
My biggest gripe is sifting through a ****ton of pages/posts to find out what people are having problems with to see if an upgrade is worth it or to skip a cycle and see what comes next. No, sub forums will not resolve that gripe but possibly creating a new topic for each major milestone would.
Sub forums however become not required with a tag cloud. I would love the ability to simply click "themes" or "trackball colour" or "cyanogen"...
making sub forums makes it easier to search for stuff....
personally I would like to see a split between discussions about issues and apps for rooted devices from those that are about stock apps / devices. There is a lot of good stuff in the forums for me (non-rooted) but there is (rightly) a lot of discussion about rooting and apps that need root - It would help me if I could filter these out.
Hi themers,
Over the last weeks I've seen some amazing themes and styles for the deodexed Froyo roms, I'm genuinely impressed with the creativity and artistic skill. There's also clearly a high demand for such themes as a casual read of the various threads indicate.
However, I've seen a significant increase in the number of theme-related problems people are having. In my observation some of this is because people don't read carefully but some is also because clear direction is not provided.
As themers will now be aware, the dependencies between roms, frameworks, apps and themes can be quite complex. Typically a theme built for one rom may experience problems with applied to a different rom.
So, I'd like us to pull together to help the user community. All I ask is that you explicitly list roms you have tested your theme on and include this, with version numbers, clearly in your download links post. Of course users may still not follow instructions but you've done your best.
In return, and on the hope that it will make your job easier, I am happy to help you get your theme up and running on Kang-o-rama. I can provide pre-patched frameworks, support and assistance. This assistance may also help you with other roms but I can't make any promises here.
Ultimately, if we collaborate on this you'll probably be able to release more update.zips instead or morphs which I feel will probably lesson the support burden over time.
It's great if you don't need this support, but I'd like to make the Kang-o-rama user experience as seamless as possible, during install and every day thereafter. If supporting you helps me achieve that aim then it's worth my investment.
So, if you're creating a theme for Kang-o-rama and would like my help, guidance or insight, please feel free to send me a PM with a clear subject line.
(Although I'm going on holiday in a week...)
I'm just trying to gauge some interest about whether or not people would find this useful.
What it would essentially be is a website where developers can link to in their threads to organise the bugs people find.
Dev's can upload screenshots of their ROM, link to it etc. It would have a bug tracking system where users can post bugs found and the dev can highlight when these are fixed.
There would also be a section for changelogs etc. With each upgrade of a ROM, the previous ROM becomes archived, however still available for people to download. Users can also rate the ROM.
What this would essentially do is minimise the amount of issues highlighted in threads which the dev can easily miss. This would leave the ROM threads open to requests and general talk.
Who would find this type of service useful if it was exclusive to xda?
Anyone?
10char..
I could see something like that being useful for me.
Below is a format that should be used as an example of how a rom thread should look. It doesnt have to be exact. I suggest that you stay creative and use all the features in the advanced panel when creating a thread.
1. Name of rom, team, etc
2. Introduction
3. Changelog in code or php tags
4. What's included in the rom in the (apps, tweaks, scripts, addons, mods) in code of php tags
5. What works/what doesn't work in code or php tags
6. Credits (Users name-with link to (profile/github/or thread u got tweak from embedded), and what they did to help you)
7. Screenshots (2-10 different screenshots of different aspects of rom)
8. Kernel with either link to thread you got it from or github (if stock sense or cm please state that and that is enough)
9. Instructions on how to install the rom (also if special instruction for a2sd or beats audio...etc)
10. Do's and Don'ts of the rom
11. Questions & Answers section (I find this helpful to write out asked questions with solutions at the bottom of the op. I find that it cuts down on the question being asked a million times)
12. Finally the dl link
13. Additional add-ons (this can go into first post or reserved posts after)
I find the embedded link looks and feels better throughout the op if possible.
All sections should have a header with enlarged text and spaced out so people can read it easily.
I am hoping that this helps to make this section a little cleaner and easier. enjoy
The way I look at this is that it takes US weeks/days/hours to make these roms....we can take the time out to make sure that the op looks professional and clean
Also Make sure the op is fully ready before posting. I know we all get excited to release a rom but stating that half the stuff will be updated as time permits just shows that you are lazy and in a hurry which doesnt look good cause if thats the case then how does your rom run....
No posting a a rom thread without a DL link either
Thanks Papa Smurf151 i think everyone who is getting ready to post a rom should be redirected here!
sorry if im not allowed to post here, so please delete my comment if needed
i left this open for feedback
How about how stable it is like in the old days?
I remember last year everyone would label them as beta, RC, final etc.
bennyboy78 said:
How about how stable it is like in the old days?
I remember last year everyone would label them as beta, RC, final etc.
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I think what Papa Smurf outlined in the OP is more then enough and it covers the basics while keeping the majority of the threads uniformed or at least try to
I also don't think we should start being over critical here and require individuals that start threads in the development section to add labels like Alpha, Beta, MC, RC or whatever.
I understand that having labels would make things a whole lot easier for the user BUT it also doesn't encourage the user to read about what he or she flashes onto their phone.
I don't know how many times I've seen a user complain and harass developers over something that was clearly their (the user) fault because they didn't read the OP. They saw fancy screenshots and saw the download link and either ended up bricking their phone or causing their phone to turn into a hot pocket...lol
Not trying to tell people how to do their job BUT I think we should encourage users to read/search more not shortcut things for users.
Mazda said:
I think what Papa Smurf outlined in the OP is more then enough and it covers the basics while keeping the majority of the threads uniformed or at least try to
I also don't think we should start being over critical here and require individuals that start threads in the development section to add labels like Alpha, Beta, MC, RC or whatever.
I understand that having labels would make things a whole lot easier for the user BUT it also doesn't encourage the user to read about what he or she flashes onto their phone.
I don't know how many times I've seen a user complain and harass developers over something that was clearly their (the user) fault because they didn't read the OP. They saw fancy screenshots and saw the download link and either ended up bricking their phone or causing their phone to turn into a hot pocket...lol
Not trying to tell people how to do their job BUT I think we should encourage users to read/search more not shortcut things for users.
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Well said, couldn't agree any more.
MBQsniper said:
Well said, couldn't agree any more.
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See I assumed this was common sense and ROMs that are missing a lot of these details, I don't give the time of day too so those ROMs don't matter to me. Because in my mind all the good ROM's out there already follow this in some way shape or form.
I appreciate what you did but I don't see why we need it is all.
As long as these are only guidelines and not enforceable rules, I agree with them. But I wouldn't agree with deleting/locking threads that fail to follow these guidelines; that would send the wrong message to developers.
v5HMeca said:
As long as these are only guidelines and not enforceable rules, I agree with them. But I wouldn't agree with deleting/locking threads that fail to follow these guidelines; that would send the wrong message to developers.
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Rom threads will never be locked or deleted for not following these guidelines. I would hope devs would embrace them and if a fellow dev isn't then I would hope someone would point them here and try to help them. Most rom devs want to have a nice looking op. But some of them are new and don't know better or are very young and don't know better. This just helps to give structure that they can refer to and say oh yeah maybe I should have that or this.
XDA Moderator
Cherokee4Life said:
See I assumed this was common sense and ROMs that are missing a lot of these details, I don't give the time of day too so those ROMs don't matter to me. Because in my mind all the good ROM's out there already follow this in some way shape or form.
I appreciate what you did but I don't see why we need it is all.
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What?