syntactic sugar vs. design

["Peter Jacobi" <pj walter-graphtek com>]

If I may offer an opinion, despite the fact the I just learned about GConf (I 
try to keep it short):

The abstract model of the GConf Information should be the post-schema-
validation-infoset of XML (adding type info to the nodes). DOM need not 
be the (only) API. Access to atomic values can be provided using the 
existing API. Access to entire subtrees can be provided via libxml2, with 
the choice of SAX or DOM-lite interfaces.

The value added in GConf over use of libxml2 against a normal XML file 
will be:

- notification on changes
- transaction support
- intelligent mapping of per-x settings

In the area of extensibility prior art in the XML area can be reused (see 
the debate on designing XML Schemas for extensibility).

Configuration data expected to belong lasting, should be designed data-
centric ("data lasts longer than programs"), typically not matching the 
the actual in memory representation of a program.

Expected-to-be per-application configuration data ("save the window 
layout, column width, sort orders filter the user selected") can be a direct 
dump of the in memory representation in SOAP encoding.

Kind Reagrds,
Peter Jacobi