RE: config library. Was GNOME registry

[Rowan van der Molen <bigsmoke usa net>]

At 14:11 2-01-99 +0100, you wrote:
>At 09:34 02.01.99 +0100, Rowan van der Molen wrote:
>>At 12:35 1-01-99 -0800, you wrote:
>>>I have put up a page.
>>><http://www.thestuff.net/libcfg>http://www.thestuff.net/libcfg
>Wonderful
>Maybe we should try to get an own mailing list to.
>
>>>> >Such a library would be wonderful if all programs used it. It is very
>>>> >important that the library should offer the possibility to store the
data
>>>> >in text files (maybe with an appropriate directory structure).
>>>> At this point my little XML idea might come in handy or won't it?
>I like the idea of using XML for a text file storage.
>
>>I think that you might very easily make a program which puts a nice lay-out
>>on your screen in which you can change your XML config files which can
>>than be converted to the appropriate plain text config files through XSL or
>>made
>>available through a nice CORBA or library api.
>>If we use XML for our config files it might be very easy to make a nice
>>configuration
>>manager by just making it an XML/XSL frond-end. 
>I know that most people won't like this, but I think such a tool would be
>(in a way) similiar to the Windows regedit. That would make it easy for
>Windows sysadmins.
>But the big advantage of XML config files would be that you do not NEED to
>use the tool. That is something I always hated about the Windows registry.
>
>>I think that you simply can't program a GUI configuration program for every
>>single
>>program which appears and even if you would succeed with that, it would be
>>outdated 
>>and old-fashioned before it's even downloaded.
>Exactly.
>
>>Instead of that you can simply declare the rules for writing config files
for
>>the program 
>>and the program (XSL processor) can wirte the config files for you. 
>>This way you could even go so far that the end-user doesn't even need to
know
>>what 
>>programs he's running under the shell of his beautifull configuration
>>program. 
>>He sets the background and the background changes but he doesn't even
need to
>>know
>>what WM he's running because the program writes the appropriate config file
>>for
>>it ;-)
>Would be nice.
>
>>I like abstraction
>I like abstraction too.
>I think that we could provide a very high level of abstraction to the
>programmer because speed is not important. The only disadvantage of
>abstraction is speed. 
>
>A central configuration library would be a big step for the UNIX world.
> 
Now that I'm talking about such nice things with such nice guys I start to
like Linux
better every minute. Ain't it great that we can just change everything we want?