Improving user interaction with gconf

[MArk Finlay <sisob eircom net>]

Recently i have been involved in a lot of discussion of how users
interact with the gconf system, and I've been thinking about it a lot. 

I was recently quite surprised to find out how easy it is to lock down
parts of the user's desktop using the manditory gconf folder. As havoc
pointed out more work needs to be done to make this complete, but  as I
see it the gconf system has brought us more than 3/4 of the way there.
We just have to present these features to the user in a more gooey way.

My idea for how to do that is this: create a gconf-administrator program
which is almost identicle to gconf-editor except that it can only be run
by root and that it does not allow for the editing of any single user's
keys. It would be used to edit manditory keys and schemas/defaults.

1. Manditory keys: The way i envisaged this working is that every key in
the system schemas is presented but they are all blank. If the user sets
a key it is then enforced. if they unset it, it is not enforced.

2. Schemas: I cannot see why this is currently in gconf-editor, it is
not possible to edit them, and i cannot see any reason to want to browse
them. So i would move these out of the gconf-editor and into the
gconf-administrator and make them editable.

---

Also the gconf-editor needs some brushing up. ATM it reminds people of
regedit, which is something i usually tell them to get used to. But I do
agree that the tree view is less than efficient navigation could be
handled in a much more intuitive manner.

One way i thought of would be to have side pane instead of a tree view -
with a view for each top level folder: apps, desktop and system. This
would make browsing a lot more structured.

Also it would be far superior to be able to browse the apps folder using
application icons.

My ideas for the gconf-administrator are more concrete, but I think that
we should also do something major to improve the gconf-editor 

Later

MArk

-- 
		 .--= [ MArk Finlay - sisob ] =--.

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