Disable options that make no sense for the type of control being used

We’ve just had a problem diagnosed for us by Percussion UK Technical Support, which was traced to the Allow inline links checkbox being ticked for a field whose control type cannot allow inline links. (For future reference, this resulted in a Content is not allowed in prolog.: {1} error when attempting to save an item on this type using the Content Editor.)

This begs the question, why are options such as this not disabled when it would make no sense for them to be selected? Ideally they should be greyed out in the user interface. If that is not possible, conflicting conditions should be tested for in the code and ignored. Perhaps a review of the applicability of all the various options should be conducted?

Andrew.