Cumulus.ini (preserving history)

This page has been renamed from "Cumulus.ini" to preserve the early history of that page.

The information that was on this old Cumulus.ini page has been moved into separate pages for Cumulus 1, MX early releases, and MX latest releases.

History of this page

This page has proved the most complicated of all those in the Wiki to maintain:

1. Settings change extremely often
   • Therefore it is a lot of effort to keep the documentation up to date
   • It is obviously easiest if an update is made here as soon as the settings change, sometimes that happens (perhaps by developer doing an update here)
2. The design of configuration menus/screens/pages to edit the settings periodically changes
   • This means information about how to change settings often depends upon which release someone is using
     • In turn that means, either Cumulus users of latest release, or those using an earlier release, will struggle with the documentation
3. Developers often provide limited information about settings,
   • Sometimes new settings are mentioned in an answer in a forum post, and do not get mentioned as a change in release announcements
     • This means that finding accurate information to update this page requires an awful lot of research that is very time consuming

The above observations applied for the legacy software, when Cumulus 2, and then 3 (MX), came along the documentation was originally split. When MX started (in 2019 to early 2020) to try to replicate much of what Cumulus 1 offered, it made sense to reuse what was written on this page for Cumulus 1, instead of duplicating it on a second page.

Then from mid 2020 to early 2021, there was rapid development of MX by the new developer, and MX began to increasingly diverge more and more from the legacy configuration, this page reflected that by introducing sub-sections (Cumulus 1 only, MX only, and both). From early 2021 onwards that 3 sub-section design for this page failed because new MX releases began to diverge from earlier MX releases. In other words, parameters that had existed at an early MX release, were no longer used by later releases. It was possible, but increasingly more and more difficult, to track new parameters to add that were added at particular releases, so the documentation got more and more obsolete.

To sum up, it was impossible for this page to show information for the legacy software, for early MX releases, and for later MX releases. The response was to move off this page anaything not relevant to the latest MX release, and to restructure this page based on how MX settings are altered, rather than where a parameter appears in the file.

Steve Loft Era

The configuration file content relating to the legacy software (e.g. 1.9.4) has been moved to legacy page

Legacy Software 1.x.y releases	Beta builds of legacy software	Cumulus 2 alpha releases	MX beta 3.0.0
This page was created for the legacy Cumulus 1 software (up to 1.9.4). If you look at the history tab of this page, user‎ Shamrockspider created this page at 12:55 on 27 August 2009 for the purpose of Documenting the cumulus.ini file content and its function. Back in 2009, the file was fairly simple, and therefore documentating it was also fairly easy. Some settings were in configuration screens, and the file was arranged so that those settings were stored under a heading that generally (not in every case, for historic reasons) reflected the screen name. Documenting these was comparitively easy, the setting could be found easily and its allowed values could be easily tested. A lot of extra settings were added to the file, but not added to the configuration screens. Documenting these was particularly difficult as only some got mentioned in release announcements, so the others were hard to discover, and allowed values were not always clear.	Each time a beta version of Cumulus 1 was available, any parameters specific to that beta appeared in Cumulus.ini_(Beta), and only moved to the main page when that beta finished, and became the main release.	The same beta page, Cumulus.ini_(Beta), was briefly used for Cumulus 2.	Finally, that beta page, Cumulus.ini_(Beta), was used for all the changes in Cumulus 3 (the MX beta): Some of the parameters for Cumulus 1 were not used by MX beta Some of the parameters for Cumulus 1 were used by MX beta Beta MX only added 3 new parameters This was the position when Steve Loft ceased his involvement with Cumulus. This page contained all parameters used for Cumulus 1, some of these were used by MX beta too. The beta page contained some Cumulus 1 beta parameters that were still under development and the parameters that were only used by MX.

Mark Crossley era

The configuration file content relating to old releases has been moved to old MX page

The Cumulus.ini page now covers just the latest MX releases

When Mark Crossley brought MX out of beta, he started adding new features to MX:

• Some features used parameters that had been used for the legacy software
• For other new features, he created new parameters

• This page is now only for release 3.10.1 onwards
• An attempt is made to record the release that introduced each setting, both for those introduced earlier than 3.10.1, and for those introduced in later releases

MX beta releases 3.0.0 to MX release 3.4.6	MX releases 3.6.0 to 3.9.7	MX releases 3.10.0 to 3.11.4	MX release 3.12.0 onwards
All documentation was on the beta page, Cumulus.ini_(Beta), this was a combination of information copied from this page, and information about all the new settings introduced by MX. This continued to be used until April 2020, when all the information was moved to this page.	All documentation was previously on this page, it became very complicated as can be seen on old MX page as some parameters were controlled by settings pages in the admin interface and some by directly editing the file. Please note, nobody copied the various changes to the configuration file mentioned in MX release announcements from 3.8.0 to 3.9.7 inclusive into the Wiki, if anyone can be bothered, they should be added to the documentation on that old MX page!	* From release 3.10.0, much of the information that was produced for earlier MX releases became invalid. Release 3.10.0 was actually withdrawn. Release 3.10.x added a lot of new settings, and made others redundant. Release 3.10.x totally rewrote all the settings pages, making past references to how you edit parameters redundant. Consequently, this page was emptied again, and made ready for new content to reflect how MX works from 3.10.1 onwards. The aim of the new approach is to for all settings to be adjusted within the admin interface (sometimes called dashboard interface) settings pages, but in these releases there were still some settings that were simply read from the configuration file.	* Release 3.12.0 is another major change affecting configuration documentation This release introduced a lot of new settings So more to document! This release moved some settings from one section in the settings pages to another So the page had to be redesigned again so that it was easier to maintain when settings were moved! This release provided places in the settings pages to alter more of the settings that had been read only So the page has fewer parameters that have to be edited directly in the file

Original content of this page

How this page used to be laid out, and why

For both Cumulus 1 and early MX releases, the content on this page was arranged assuming people were editing the file directly.

Therefore, the file was described by working through the sections on the file, and explaining the parameters that could go in each section.

For the longer sections, parameters might be split into separate tables to make it easier.

Before release 3.10.1, there were two types of parameters in Cumulus.ini.

1. "read-only" settings were made directly in the "Cumulus.ini" file, there was no way to adjust these parameters using the settings screens/pages
2. "read-write" settings could be changed in two ways, either by editing the file with Cumulus stopped, or by finding the parameter on a setting screen (for MX, these are in admin interface).

You will see in the two pages split off from this page (Cumulus.ini_(Cumulus_1) and Cumulus.ini (MX_3.0.0_to_3.7.0)), how the parameters had to identify themselves as read-only or read-write.

Why has this original "Cumulus.ini" page been renamed, cleared of old content, and made historic?

1. One big change in 3.10.1 is that (almost) all settings are now made via the Admin interface.
   • Therefore it makes no sense any more to organise this page how someone editing the file directly might want.
   • The replacement Cumulus.ini page is now organised by how you change settings in the admin interface (i.e. similar to how settings have been explained in MX_Administrative_Interface#Changing_Settings).
2. Another change is that some of the settings that used to be made on the “Station Settings” page, are now made on different pages in that interface.
3. Yet another change is that what you pick in some settings can affect what settings are shown later on the admin interface page.
   • You could say the settings pages have become intelligent.
   • For example, when you select a weather station type it ensures only parameters that relate to that weather station type are shown.
   • As another example, you can opt in or out of the default web site design, so that determines which parameters relating to web sites are shown.
4. A final change is that some parameters are grouped as “Advanced”, so that novices can avoid those.