Re: [HC Evolution] Re: libole2 -> gnomevfs backend?

[NotZed <notzed helixcode com>]

> Ettore wrote:
> >   What about efs then?
>
> Is it stable, fast and usable?
>
> >   I think the problem with `tar.gz' and `zip' is that they are not
> > going to be fast.  It's a real pain to update them.
>
> agreed
>
> >   But, incidentally, I must say am not very fond of this
> > filesystem-in-a-file idea myself.  Why not just using a directory?
>
> Localizing Evolution and Wombat related data into a file makes things easier
> for a user. They can move a file from one machine to another, and they can
> back up that one file onto another machine. We're going for ease of use
> here; a single file for storage says "I'm your Evolution stuff", but a
> directory says "I have a million files in me, and I'm complicated. Edit my
> files and you'll mess everything up. Explore me and you'll get confused."

Uh?  Why would a user want to?  Hiding it in a single file just
makes it impossible to edit or understand (or fix, or troubleshoot, etc).

If a user has to worry about automatically created any file at all,
then its already too complicated.  "save settings as" seems to work
pretty well, or in a real enterprise environment their settings will
be on nfs, or in a central server (e.g. ldap), so they definetly
will not need to be copying any config file.  Stop thinking
like a windoze user.

> Likewise, I think although we could store some settings in (say) gconf,
> those settings should be duplicated in our file -- again, so that if one
> changes machines, and moves their one file, they can fire up Evolution
> without problems.
>
> I admit, putting this stuff into a file (rather than a directory) doesn't
> make programmers' lives easier. But we're designing Evolution for users
> first, not programmers. :)

Doesn't really make any differnece if you ahve the interface.  A lot
of little files is a pain to program, without the config api you'll
have anyway.