Re: Panel's GConf usage

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hi Michael,

On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 22:12, Michael Meeks wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 02:55, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > I would say we should implement this as:
> >  gconftool-2 --dump /apps/panel > panel-config.xml
> ...
> 
> 	Can someone remind me quickly why we are using Gconf to store highly
> structured, dynamic, non-schema-able data ? I was under the impression
> that using a simple XML / text file was the recommended method for such
> things ?
> 
> 	What real advantages does using Gconf give here ? I can see that it's
> excellent for static groups of simple settings but ...

	There's nothing particularily unusual about this data - they are simple
settings and GConf gives us the same "real advantages" as for any other
settings.

	The problem here is simple - its a "details" problem

	1) The panel has a slightly different class of settings - there 
	   because are multiple instances of panels the schemas need to 
	   be associated with multiple keys. No real problem with that - 	  
applets have always done this.

	2) Because we want defaults multiple instances of panels with 
	   the default setup (this differs from applets or 
	   gnome-terminal profiles because with them there is only one
	   set of defaults) we're presented with a a use case where the 
	   "best practice" hasn't already been defined.

	So, I think we've come to a sensible conclusion - a schema describe the
semantics of a key, so the default panel setup has no place there -
instead the default setup belongs in the defaults database.

Good Luck,
Mark.