Re: how to store prefs/session data

[Bob Smith <bob thestuff net>]

Just an idea, why not use the control center for default preferences for
an app, and the preferences from within a menu in the app are for that
session only.

On 10 Oct 2001, Havoc Pennington wrote:

>
> Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org> writes:
> > * If a user wanted one setup where Nautilus uses a new window for each
> > directory and has the toolbar and location bar off, and another where
> > it has the default settings (perhaps because of differences in
> > available screen size or pointer device, I dunno) how would they do
> > that under your proposal? (Note: this is neither a session setting nor one
> > that is managed by the control center.)
>
> I'd suggest punting this issue for now. I think it could be done long
> term by providing a tool that fooled around with which backend GConf
> used for which keys; i.e. we could provide this feature without
> modifying apps, if GConf is used for preferences.
>
> > * How should settings that an app currently lets you set globally _or_
> > per-instance, like some of the terminal settings be handled?
>
> I think only the terminal class should be per-session, and all other
> settings should be per-terminal-class.
>
> i.e. you can have an application-specific "profile" feature, where a
> profile is a precanned set of per-instance settings, and the profile
> definitions are a global preference.
>
> I guess I'd say that there should be no concept of the "default"
> preferences in gnome-terminal, only profiles; that all terminals
> should show the same available profiles at all times (the available
> profiles and their contents are global); that it should be more clear
> that the prefs dialog is a profile editor, not a terminal-instance
> editor; and that which profile you're editing should probably be
> separated in the UI from which profile has been applied to the current
> terminal.
>
> Anyway, it's mostly a UI question. Probably g-t shouldn't have a
> Preferences menu, it should have a menu of available profiles in a
> radio group, and an "Edit Profiles..." menu item to edit the available
> profiles. Because really it doesn't have global prefs at all.
>
> > * Your design implies that display size is stored only per session and
> > not globally. I'm assuming you would handle pointer device settings,
> > color depth, etc, the same way. But if the control center "location
> > management" feature must therefore not apply to these settings, it
> > doesn't really work for purposes of location management, since these
> > are some of the primary things you may want to be different between
> > locations.
>
> There are several ways I can imagine handling the display-dependent
> stuff such as background and pointer device:
>
>  a) they are global preferences, and we have some tool which
>     special-cases some set of global preferences and auto-modifies
>     them for your location (location management is just this, right?)
>
>  b) they are per-session, and you have to create a session for each
>     location, and you can't rollback these things
>
>  c) they are global preferences, but the schema file denotes them
>     as per-machine, and GConf keeps their values in a hostname-specific
>     data repository
>
> At the moment, and maybe I'll change my mind, I think c) is right, a)
> is good enough and easy to implement, and b) is kind of broken.
>
> > * Let's say display size and color depth are per-session. Does that
> > mean that gtk theme, background color, window manager theme and all
> > font and color settings must be per-session only (since it's clear
> > that you might want all these things different between color and
> > grayscale, 8-bit color and 24-bit color, and different screen
> > resolution)? Does that imply that changing themes and fonts and colors
> > will not be remembered next time you log in unless you save the
> > session? Is that acceptable if we leave not saving the session as teh
> > default?
>
> I think a) or c) above would avoid this issue, as you say b) seems
> pretty hosed.
>
> Havoc
>
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