Configuration

[Chris Marston <deusx ls barrhead ab ca>]

I'm new to gnome and haven't, in all honesty, been able to compile the
thing yet <g> but I had an idea for a way to deal with the sundry
configuration files that throw off so many newbies:


 An xml-based config file format for 'tabbed' dialog boxes:

<panel name="Look and Feel"> 
<radio name="cuteMode" cmdline="-cute">On</radio>
...
</panel>
...

The panel would be parsed and subsequently rendered by a small gtk
application. Config-savvy applications would merely make use of a small
library containing a replacement for 'getopt' that would first load
defaults from the xml files and then override them with whichever command
line opts are supplied. Backwards compatibility could be implemented by
patching glibc to replace the 'real' getopt() <grin>. The advantages of
this system would of course be fairly seamless visual/command line
interface integration and backwards compatibility; giving people control
panels for their existing apps (as opposed to replacing those apps) would
be, IMO, quite a boon. 

More complex actions in the xml file could be written in guile; I'm amazed
at how conceptually similar scheme and xml are. 

I *would* write the damned thing myself, but I currently lack the required
skills. 

Bah. This stuff is probably new to no one.

Relurking.