Document how to access the advanced settings

[per1234]

Describe the request

Document how to access the advanced settings.

Fortunately, the nice settings interface has integrated documentation for the settings themselves. So really all that is needed is instructions for opening the interface.

Since this is an advanced capability, I don't think it's necessary for the documentation to be hosted with the standard user documentation on arduino.cc. It would be fine for this documentation to be hosted in the arduino/arduino-ide repository. This has the added benefit of allowing the developers to update the file alongside code changes that require additions/changes to the documentation.

My recommendation is to create a dedicated file docs/advanced-usage.md, which will be scoped to documentation of all advanced features available to users of the application.

🙂 The advanced settings will be more accessible to those users who will find them useful.

Describe the current behavior

The Arduino project is about making embedded systems accessible to everyone without limiting what can be accomplished with the technology. This requires providing a gentle learning curve for beginners while also allowing advanced users to do advanced things.

The Arduino IDE's primary user interface provides everything that will be required for the average user to develop sketches.

The Arduino IDE has some additional capabilities which are only of interest to advanced users who want to do things such as fine tune the behavior of the application or temporarily expand log output while investigating a problem. In order to keep the primary interface clean and friendly, the controls for these settings are intentionally separated into an advanced settings interface. This approach allows more freedom in adding such capabilities.

🙁 There is no formal documentation of how to access the advanced settings interface.

Additional context

Arduino IDE 1.x's equivalent preferences.txt file is documented in Arduino IDE 1.x right in the File > Preferences dialog:

That is a reasonable approach, but the equivalent for Arduino IDE 2.x has already been evaluated and rejected: #209 (comment)

I think that simply providing instructions for opening the interface is sufficient.

Related

• Add preference to set a custom update url #865
• Remove language server log preference #635
• Missing tab width adjustment #555 / Missing tab width adjustment #555 (comment)
• Cursor randomly jumps to beginning of line #437 (comment)
• #608, #229 Reveal the error location after the failed verify #1064 / https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-ide-2-0-0-rc8-available-for-download/1005909#identify-sketch-code-lines-that-caused-a-compilation-error-5
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/issues-with-pop-up-info/698527/6

Issue checklist

• I searched for previous requests in the issue tracker
• I verified the feature was still missing when using the latest nightly build
• My request contains all necessary details