[Koha-bugs] [Bug 10327] Rename poorly named system preferences

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=10327

Galen Charlton <gmcharlt at gmail.com> changed:

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--- Comment #1 from Galen Charlton <gmcharlt at gmail.com> ---
We should probably decide on some ground rules for this.  I'm not opposed to
the idea in general terms, as choosing better names for some system preferences
can improve Koha's polish.  However, I think it safe to assume that there are
no system preferences so poorly named that it's worth risking functionality
breakage.

Here are my preferences regarding system preference names:

- They should make positive assertions.  Consequently, "noItemTypeImages" and
"noissuescharge" should be considered for renaming.
- They should be fully spelled out except for very well-known acronyms (e.g.,
"MARC" is OK in a syspref name)
- They should describe their current purpose.

And some caveats:

- If a system preference name is also used for other purposes, particularly
database column names, the bar is going to be higher for accepting the patch. 
I'm thinking of 'marcflavour' in particular.  I value consistency in the code
base pretty highly; I would rather have a non-optimal name be used throughout
than mixing old and new names for the same concept.
- Patches that just rename system preferences are much more likely to be
accepted at the beginning of a release than at the end.
- It is OK for Koha to have a few idiosyncrasies.  Unless there's evidence that
a given name is *actually* confusing to users, these patches are never going to
be high priority.

One thing for folks to keep in mind is that system preference lookup (as with
everything else in MySQL) is case-INsensitive.  Consequently, if you're
grepping for a system preference name, remember to use -i

By the way, thanks, Kyle, for creating the omnibus bug.

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