Re: Solution for OEMs/Gnome

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

Daniel,

Thanks for all your patience.  I see from another email that sabayon
has worked for you, which is great.  That makes your whole below email
sounds like perfect marketing material for sabayon now.  :-)  Please
keep letting us know where any other warts are so we can fix them up
if they haven't been already.

Cheers,
Elijah

On 4/13/06, Daniel Carrera <daniel carrera zmsl com> wrote:
> Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> >>Gconf seems like an incredibly complicated way of adding an icon. And it
> >>doesn't seem to work at all. There is no connection between what I see
> >>on gconf-editor and the icons I see on my desktop.
> >
> > Yes, for panel it is true. But there is one chance, much simpler with
> > GNOME 2.14 (it has merged gconf tree in ~/.gconf/%gconf-tree.xml):
> > - Create new user account.
> > - Configure it as you want.
> > - Logout.
> > - Open your ~/.gconf/%gconf-tree.xml in an text editor.
> > - Find everything with /apps/panel/default_setup in its key.
> > - Insert it to updated panel-default-setup.entries.
>
> I don't have that file. I take it that Ubuntu ships with a previous
> version of Gnome.
>
> >>Except that I don't understand the contents of ~/.gconf
> >
> > These are XML files with user's changes of configuration read by gconf
> > daemon.
>
> Yes, I know what XML is, and I'm quite comfortable with XML. But that
> doesn't tell me what any of of those files means or how they work. They
> really aren't self-describing and there are 124 of them just in my
> ~/.gconf directory. I'm not going to read 124 XML files in a vain hope
> of guessing how they work.
>
> >>It seems easier to just cp ~/.gconf ~/.gnome2 /etc/skel/
> >
> > Yes, but once user makes mistake, there is no way to reset to OEM
> > default.
>
> But I don't have any other solution. As I keep saying, the Gconf
> comfiguration is a huge and incomprehensible. I shouldn't have to read
> 124 xml files just to add an icon.
>
> >>If you are talking about .../gconf/schemas/panel-default-setup.entries
> >>then I have no idea how to edit it.
> >
> > See above.
>
> Above you said this is an XML file. I knew that. I can tell you that
> OpenDocument files are XML, does that suddenly mean that now you know
> how they work?
>
> > Not icon, you are adding keys there. But even this is not intuitive, if
> > you need a new drawer:
> > - Go to lowest existing drawer
>
> Drawer? On gconf-editor I can't see anything I'd call a drawer. I see a
> tree-view of what someone might call "folders". And which one is "last"?
> Are you talking about /apps/panel/objects/object_9? Ok, I'm there.
>
> But what does this have to do with keys? I've figured out that the
> settings for the pre-configured entries are called "keys" (object-type,
> description, etc). But I don't want to add a new property to a
> pre-configured panel entry. I want to add a new one that corresponds to
> a new icon
> .
> > - Right click in right empty window
>
> I see no empty window. I see two columns full of stuff, none of which
> seems relevant to adding an icon to the panel.
>
> > - Enter the key name, including missing part of the path and /.
> > - Exit gconf-editor.
> > - Run gconf-editor.
> > Drawer and key are here.
> > I have just filled it as a bug:
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338239
>
> Thank you for filing that bug. Sadly, I don't see what adding a key to a
> panel entry has to do with adding an icon to the panel. I swear I'm not
> trying to be difficult. I did take another look at gconf-editor and I
> did try to find a way to do what I want.
>
> >>Still don't know how to edit .entries or .schemas. Like you said, they
> >>aren't exactly straight forward.
> >
> > In a text editor with a little understanding of XML.
>
> I have more than "a little" understanding of XML. That doesn't
> automatically make me understand how Gconf works. Do you have a little
> understanding of XML? Are you sure that if I gave you a broken
> OpenDocument file and said "fix the tables" you would be able to do it?
>
> Knowing XML (which I do) is not enough to understand every XML format
> ever made. If it did we wouldn't have to worry about Microsoft making a
> gibberish XML and trying to make it "standard".
>
> >>>- Change GConf path and use separate GConf database
> >>
> >>No use unless I can generate a separate GConf database.
> >
> > Yes, you can, it should be simple:
> > Create $sysconfdir/gconf/2/local-defaults.path (or edit
> > $sysconfdir/gconf/2/path)
> > Add there a directory (see the syntax in the path file).
> > Create this directory and make it world readable (default in most
> > distributions).
>
> It isn't simpe, look, first I don't know the value of $sysconfigdir, so
> I have to guess. I'll guess that it's /etc/. Okay, I see that it's a
> series of include statements and one of them is
> /etc/gconf/2/local-defaults.path. Ok, so I go edit the file and then I
> find that I still haven't the faintest clue of what to put on it. There
> are 124 files in my ~/.gconf and none of them is obviously the one I
> should copy to local-defaults.path (even if I assume that copying it is
> what I should do - which is not known).
>
> >>>But as I wrote before, for panel all these ways are very unintuitive.
> >>
> >>You could say that :)
> >
> > It is unintuitive only for default panel setup. For other things, it is
> > very straightforward. For example - change the init splash:
> > - Find /apps/gnome-session/options/splash_image in gconf editor.
>
> Configuring existing items is simple enough, but that doesn't make the
> XML file comprehensible, and it doesn't tell me how to create a new
> entrie that does what I want.
>
> > - You see nice help, which will say you, what you can do.
>
> I've heard the help, and I learned some things from it. In particular,
> to make a setting a default, I should right-click and choose "set as
> default". But I'm still right back at square one. How do I add a icon
> through gconf-editor?
>
> Best,
> Daniel.