‹ Tender
‹ BackData Management
- What is here
- Five destructive or janitorial operations that the narrow panel kept in a "Danger Zone": remove Tender's shortcuts, uninstall downloaded ROM files, delete orphaned grid artwork, remove non-Steam games Tender never added, and clean up games RomM no longer has.
- What went wrong in the first three drafts
- They all asked how do five operations sit in a menu, and every grouping needed a name for a category that only existed on screen — pick what goes, bulk actions, remove a whole kind. A category nobody can name is not a category. The pages below ask a different question: what does this page SHOW, and what are its rows?
- Already settled
- The review of the removed-games cleanup stays a dialog (up to 720 × 406 — bigger in both axes than a detail pane's 530 × ~364), redrawn with the options in two columns, a real table, and the run controls pinned at the bottom. That decision is independent of the four shapes below: each of them opens the same dialog.
- Navigation
- Focus selects in a list, so a scan is always a press and never a selection. B leaves the page. A row must be focusable to be reachable, and a region scrolls only by moving focus.
What the page can say the moment it opens
Three of the four shapes want numbers. This is what exists today, and it is the part that decides how honest a page can be on arrival rather than after a press.
| Number | Today | What it would take |
|---|---|---|
| Shortcuts Tender created | free | total_shortcuts — Main already reads it every visit |
| Non-Steam games not added by Tender | free | a scan of Steam's own shortcut store, in the frontend, as today |
| Downloaded ROM files — count | does not exist | a row count over the installs table: cheap, but a new callable |
| Downloaded ROM files — size on disk | does not exist | a walk of every install; the cleanup measures per ROM today and that is the slow part of its preview |
| Orphaned grid images | a press | the backend dry run that is the confirm's first tap today |
| Versions gone from RomM | a press | the server scan — a round trip per open would be wrong |
| Recovery bundles and their size | partly | the recovery root and free space come with the preview; a bundle listing would be new |
Settled first, because every shape below opens it
Review removed RomM games
12 kept versions are no longer on your RomM server. Nothing is removed until each one is checked against the server again — only entries RomM confirms as gone can be deleted.
Repoint vanished shortcuts to the live default
Remove confirmed rows and installed content
Remove fully vanished games, with the shortcut
Create recovery bundle
| Game | Platform | Verdict | Installed | Keep a copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrono Cross (Disc 1) | psx | Gone from RomM | 612 MB | |
| Chrono Cross (Disc 2) | psx | Gone from RomM | 608 MB | |
| Densetsu no Stafy 3 | gba | Gone from RomM | — | — |
| Panzer Dragoon Saga (Disc 1) | saturn | One of 4 versions | 441 MB | |
| Panzer Dragoon Saga (Disc 2) | saturn | One of 4 versions | 438 MB | |
| Radiant Silvergun | saturn | Gone from RomM | — | — |
| Tactics Ogre (rev 1) | psx | One of 2 versions | 318 MB |
Dialog 720 × 406, seven candidate rowsOptions two columns · table with a header · run controls pinnedB closes it, Steam's own cancel — no new rule
A · A menu of operations
The shape of the last three drafts, with the grouping dropped: five rows, each naming what it does, in the order you asked for. It is the honest version of the menu idea — no headings, because no heading could be named.
‹ Tender
‹ BackData Management
Remove all shortcuts1 284
Uninstall all ROM files—
Remove orphaned grid imagesscan
Remove non-Steam games63
Clean up removed RomM games12
Clean up removed RomM games
Versions your RomM server no longer holds. Each one is checked against the server again before anything goes, and a recovery bundle is sealed first.
Waiting
Gone from RomM12 of 1 284 versions
Scanned4 minutes ago
Review 12 versions›
Scan again›
Last run
18 Sep, 21:047 removed · 0 problems
Five verbs in a column · pane 530 pxEntry focus lands on the first ROW, so nothing is armed by opening the page
Notes
- 1
Every row starts with a verb, so no heading has to carry one and no category has to be invented. Repetition is a feature on a page that deletes things.
- 2
The count is what the button label used to carry — today's Remove 63 Non-Steam Games becomes a row that says 63, and the full sentence sits on the button in the pane.
What it costs
- The page shows nothing. It is five doors; you learn what is behind one by walking onto it. What Tender has actually put on this device — how many shortcuts, how much disk, how many leftovers — is never on screen at once, and that is the question a user opens this page with.
- Two of the five rows say scan rather than a number, and in a menu of verbs that reads as a missing feature rather than as "nobody has looked yet".
- It is a list of buttons wearing a list-and-detail layout: the pane exists to hold one button and a sentence.
B · An inventory
Turn the page around. The rows are not operations but the things Tender has put on this device — shortcuts, ROM files, artwork, foreign shortcuts, versions the server no longer has. Each row is a population with a number; the pane says what that population is and offers what you can do with it. No category needs a name, because every row is already a thing.
A population, and what you can do with it
‹ Tender
‹ BackData Management
Steam shortcuts1 284
Downloaded ROM files214
Grid imagesscan
Other non-Steam games63
Gone from RomM12
Recovery bundles3
Steam shortcuts
Every shortcut Tender put in your Steam library. Removing them leaves ROM files and saves untouched, and the next sync puts them back.
On this device
Created by Tender1 284
In collections6 collections
Last written18 Sep, 21:04
Remove
Remove all 1 284 shortcuts›
Unavailable while a library sync is running.
Rows are things, not verbs · the verb is on the buttonThe dot marks the one row that wants attentionSix rows — recovery bundles become visible for the first time
The one row that is a condition rather than a possession
‹ Tender
‹ BackData Management
Steam shortcuts1 284
Downloaded ROM files214
Grid imagesscan
Other non-Steam games63
Gone from RomM12
Recovery bundles3
Gone from RomM
Versions this device still keeps that your RomM server no longer has. Each is checked against the server again before anything goes, and a recovery bundle is sealed first.
On this device
Versions gone12 of 1 284
Of those, installed5 · 2.4 GB
Scanned4 minutes ago
Remove
Review 12 versions›
Scan again›
Last cleanup
18 Sep, 21:047 removed · 0 problems
Same pane shape as every other row: what it is, the numbers, then what you can doReview opens the dialog
Notes
- 1
No category has to be named, and that is the point. Every row is a population — a thing you have — so the list needs neither headings nor a taxonomy. The failure of three naming attempts was the evidence that the rows were wrong, not the names.
- 2
The page answers a question people actually arrive with — "what has this thing put on my Deck, and how much space is it using?" Deleting is then a consequence of what you see, not a menu you pick from blind.
- 3
Recovery bundles become a row, and the moment they do it is obvious they need one: they are sealed copies that take disk and nothing in the panel lists them today. That the shape reveals a missing feature is a good sign about the shape.
- 4
Rows that need a scan say so in place, and a scan stays a press — Grid images reads "scan" until you ask, and then it reads "118 orphaned of 3 402" forever after.
- 5
"Other non-Steam games" reads right here where it never did in a menu: the list is the things on this device, and these are the ones Tender did not put there. The odd operation becomes an ordinary row.
What it costs
- Numbers the backend does not have. The ROM-file count is a new callable (cheap); the size on disk is a walk of every install, which is the slow part of the cleanup's preview today. Either the page states counts and not sizes, or the sizes arrive with their own scan.
- One row is not a possession but a condition — Gone from RomM. It fits (it is a set of things this device holds), but it is the row most likely to want the notice treatment on Main as well.
- More surface than a menu: six panes to write and test rather than five sentences and five buttons.
- A row whose count is unknown and whose scan you never press stays a row that shows nothing — the menu's flaw, confined to one line instead of the page.
C · One table, no menu
The same inventory, but the page is the table: five rows, all of them on screen, each with its count, the space it takes and its action. Nothing is selected, nothing is behind a pane — and the reviews open the dialog straight from the row.
‹ Tender
‹ BackData Management
What Tender has put on this device, and what you can take back.
| On this device | How many | Space | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam shortcuts Created by Tender · the next sync puts them back | 1 284 | — | Remove all |
| Downloaded ROM files Re-downloadable from RomM | 214 | 128 GB | Uninstall all |
| Grid images Artwork of shortcuts that no longer exist | — | — | Scan |
| Other non-Steam games Not added by Tender — RetroDECK lives here | 63 | — | Review |
| Gone from RomM 12 versions the server no longer has | 12 | 2.4 GB | Review |
806 px · five rows and a footer, all above the foldThe action is in the row; the two reviews open the dialogA row's second line is what the pane would have said
Notes
- 1
The whole footprint in one screen. No selection, no pane, no walking — the page is an answer rather than a menu, and the footer adds the one number nothing else shows (free space and what the recovery bundles take).
- 2
The action column is the confirmation surface too — two-tap turns Remove all into Confirm, in place, which is how the platform detail's BIOS table already works.
What it costs
- Every explanation shrinks to one line under the name. Today's sentences — what a removal leaves behind, why the whitelist matters, that RetroDECK can be taken — do not fit, and this is the page where that text is the safety rail.
- A row with a button is one focus stop, so the row cannot also be a stop that reveals more. The detail has nowhere to go but a dialog, and then three of the five rows open dialogs.
- It grows badly: a sixth and seventh population (recovery bundles, save files?) push the table under the fold, where the whole argument for this shape was that everything is visible.
- It is the one shape that no other page in the panel uses — Sync's preview is a table, but it is a table of one kind of thing, not a page built as a table.
D · No page at all
The most radical reading of "maybe the page is wrong": there is no Data Management page. Each operation moves to the page that owns the thing it touches, and the menu entry disappears. Drawn as two sketches, because the point is where things land rather than how they look.
The cleanup goes to Sync — it is the sync's other direction
‹ Tender
‹ BackSync
Check for changes
Sync now
Force full sync
Last run 18 Sep, 21:04 · 34 added, 7 updated
| Platform | New | Updated | Removed |
|---|---|---|---|
| PlayStation | 12 | 3 | — |
| Saturn | — | 1 | 4 |
Gone from RomM !
12 versions are no longer on your server
Checked again before anything is removed; a recovery bundle is sealed first.
Review 12 versions
Scan again
Sketch — the Sync page as it is today, with the cleanup as its last section
The bulk removals go to Library, beside the per-platform ones
‹ Tender
‹ BackLibrary
L1PlatformsCollectionsR1
Enable all
Disable all
Remove all shortcuts
Uninstall all
Synced
PlayStation
Saturn
SNES
PlayStation132 on RomM · 128 in Steam
Emulator core
Beetle PSX HW›
Remove
Remove 128 shortcuts
Delete save files
Sketch — the two library-wide removals as the list header's "all" counterpartOrphaned grid images and Non-Steam games would land in Settings
Notes
- 1
Every action next to the thing it acts on. The cleanup is what to do after the server changed, which is what the Sync page is about; the library-wide removals are the "all platforms" version of buttons Library already has.
- 2
One page fewer, and the panel's menu loses an entry whose name never said what was inside it.
What it costs
- Destructive actions get scattered across three pages, and two of them land on pages people visit for ordinary work. "Where do I go to clean up?" stops having an answer.
- Two of the five have no home. Orphaned grid images and non-Steam games belong to no page in the panel — they would sit in Settings › Advanced, which is where things go to be lost.
- It is a much larger change than #1817: Sync, Library, Settings, Main's menu and the register's "one home per action" table all move at once.
- The register's rule that a notice names a condition and jumps to its home still needs a home to jump to — here the home is a section of another page, which is what Settings sections already do, so the rule survives. That is the one thing this shape does not break.
Side by side
| A · menu | B · inventory | C · one table | D · no page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What a row is | a button | a thing you have | a thing you have | — |
| Needs a category name | no | no | no | no |
| Shows the footprint | never | one row at a time | all at once | never |
| Room for the safety text | a pane | a pane | one line | a pane |
| New backend reads | none | install count, sizes, bundles | the same, and more visibly missing | none |
| Fits the panel's shipped patterns | yes | yes | new shape | partly |
| Size of the change | #1817 as scoped | #1817 plus backend reads | #1817 plus backend reads | four pages and the menu |
| Grows to a sixth thing | a row | a row | pushes the table under the fold | needs another home |
Open questions, whichever shape wins
- Sizes or only counts. An inventory is far better with "128 GB" than with "214 files", and that number costs a walk of every install. It could arrive per row on a press, like the scans.
- Where a run in flight is announced. A cleanup runs for minutes; Main has a conditional slot and notice rows. The same decision in every shape.
- Recovery bundles. Three shapes above make them visible. Nothing in the panel lists or deletes them today — that is a new capability, and it is out of #1817's scope unless you want it in.
- Whether non-Steam games belongs to Tender at all. In B and C it reads as an ordinary row ("things on this device Tender did not add"). In A and D it stays the odd one out.