Make default

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

I think we should have a discussion about the future of 'Make default'
or 'Apply system-wide...' buttons in preference dialogs. We have a
somewhat sucky situation right now, where

- some 'Make default'  buttons are upstream (e.g. in power preferences)

- Fedora is shipping some 'Make default' patches (background:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536531)

- Ubuntu is shipping some more (keyboard:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598872 , ...)

- OpenSuse is probably shipping some too ?


Jens has not been very receptive to these patches so far, questioning
the use case. So, maybe that would be a good starting point for the
discussion.

Why do we want these buttons ? The original motivation for why this
idea came up is that it is sometimes necessary to tweak
system-defaults, because they apply a) during boot and on the login
screen (e.g. keyboard language, screen resolution) and b) they apply
to new accounts. And having separate UI for the system settings leads
to a ton of duplication and really grotty, distro-specific sysconf
tools.

Maybe the way forward here is to work a UI for this that is more
elegant than just extra buttons. What if we had a button/combobox
combination that would let you select wether to apply locally,
globally or mandatory (of course, only if you have the privileges):

[Apply |v]

where if you click on the rightmost part of the button (the arrow),
you get a popup that lets you choose

Apply
Apply system-wide...
Make mandatory...


Comments ?


Matthias