Re: panel gconf changes

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Peter Williams <peterw ximian com> writes: 
> Since it seems like needing to extend a key will be a fairly common
> task, maybe it would be possible to implement this in gconf .schema
> files? As in (making up syntax here)
> 
> <key name="foo_2" extends="foo">
> 
> Will cause gconf to automatically initialize foo_2 to the value of foo
> if the former is unset, and mirror changes in the new key to the old
> one, tho I can see trouble figuring out if/when this is possible. Then
> maybe a smart gconf editor could also somehow use this knowledge to not
> display the key foo when foo_2 is also present.
> 

I don't think mirroring new key back to old key works (you would need
to know for example, say the old version understands 
values a/b/c, new version a/b/c/d, if someone sets the new one to d
then what is the old one set to?)

You could have a way to say "foo_2 is a superset of foo so 
fall back to foo whenever foo_2 is unset" - potentially useful, but it
also adds extra scariness to an already scary bit of gconf
implementation code...

The implications are potentially as worrisome as the implications of
symlinks, which just complicate the heck out of knowing who to notify
of changes when - thogh maybe you could keep it simple by saying that
foo_2 and foo have to be in the same directory.

Havoc