Re: GConf Key Reference

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-05-16 at 23:15 -0600, Brent Smith wrote:
> I've been playing around with python, libxml2, libxslt and gconf schemas
> files... This is what I've come up with:
> 
> http://www.gnome.org/~bmsmith/gconf-keys/index.html
> 
> I was wondering if there were any opinions about generating a "key"
> reference for each dot OH release?  Right now ISVs have to either go
> to the xml files at /etc/gconf/schemas/*.schemas, or navigate around in
> gconf-editor to figure out what keys do what (unless they know about
> something I don't, which is entirely possible)
> 
> The python script basically aggregates all the keys by the content of
> the <owner> element, uses a bit of metadata to categorize them, and then
> spits out  some docbook to give what you see at the above URL.
> 
> I think generating a key reference would be beneficial in a number of
> ways:
> 
> 1) it lets us know what keys have changed between stable releases

It would be really cool to track what keys were in the previous
version (and then we'll have to decide which version is the most
useful to consider "previous") and do some special formatting of
new and changed keys.

Unfortunately, a lot of cases of backwards-compatibility breaks
(and forwards-compatibility breaks) just won't be detectable with
any sort of script that I can think of, and that would be really
nice data to have.  (Not so that we can adjust for it, but so that
we know it's time to smack a developer.)

Joachim's suggestion to use a variable list is good.  Also, the
default values for string types might be better off in monospace,
or at least a wide font.  (Damn the web for giving us too much
font control, but not the sort of font control we really need.)

Man, I wish GConf allowed key descriptions to have simple inline
formatting.  Look at those descriptions in /apps/sound-juicer!

--
Shaun