Re: GConf design goals.

[Dietmar Maurer <dietmar ximian com>]

We have talked a lot about structures until know, but CORBA_any supports
more than that. So another example are enumeration types. In bonobo-conf
we store enumeration types together with the type info, consisting of an
ordered set of names. Two enumeration types are equal if the names and
the order are equal.

So what are the advantages/disadvantages of that system, as opposed to
storing enumeration types as integers? The advantage is that we have
strong type checking, so that we can detect incompatible types. We can
even try to do automatic type conversions (upgrades) if someone adds an
enumeration value in a binary compatible way.

And I can see no disadvantage, simply because I can still store
enumeration values as integers.

Exactly the same applies to structures.

- Dietmar