bluesky admin requests

[seth vidal <skvidal phy duke edu>]

Hi,
 Consider this 2.6ish or beyond I guess but I have a list of requests
from an administrative point of view for both gnome-generic and red
hat's gnome.

1. all icons/themes/configurations be done in /etc/gconf and/or schemas
- at no point will any pixmap be hardcoded into the code ANYWHERE. If
there are no present default configuration or schemas then you're
screwed, you're SOL. The point of this is to avoid the misc rpm patching
to make sure certain icons show up in certain places. Looking through
the gnome-panel package for rhl 9, I cannot fathom why it would be
necessary for redhat-main-menu.png to be hardcoded into menu-util.c ever
again in the future. From an admin perspective knowing that all the
settings will be defined in the config files and not hardcoded into the
source is comforting.

2. allow variables/wildcards in gconftool-2 commands that will be filled
in by the user's username/gecos name, etc. For example: It'd be nice to 
preload all the evolution settings I want for my users in advance of
them ever running evolution. So in the best of all worlds:
   - they login
   - they get the original settings
   - these defaults have variables in them that get filled out with
information that has to exist for the user to login at all (ie:
username)
   - this information is written to the gconf settings in the homedir
gconf
   - when they run evo for the first time they just have to type in
their password and boom, they have all their email. 

You talk about making linux easier to use, if my users don't have to set
up apps at all for their environment then that makes gnome and linux A
WHOLE LOT easier to push on them. I'm more than comfortable spending a
week coming up with defaults for things. I did this on windows when I
used to admin windows machines. I preloaded HKEY_DEFAULT_USER registry
profiles with default settings and .ini files that sat in their homedirs
were preloaded, but it meant my users didn't screw around with their
settings unless there was something they wanted to change.
 
3. make it possible for gconf-editor to be pointed at
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults or gconf.xml.mandatory and ONLY edit those
settings - it'd be nice to edit some in a nice semi-graphical interface,
save them, then copy them out to be pushed onto the machine in a %post
of a kickstart.

4. ditto of the above with panel and menuconfigs 

5. I don't know if this is even possible but maybe have some way of
doing a gconftool-2 --list-all-possible-key-names - so it will print out
all the possible settings of any kind on any app. Ideally, so I don't
have to go hunting through lots of code to find out how to make foo
disabled on the bar applet.

6. make the mandatory settings possible for things like 'ssl in mail
servers' or 'enable password checking on screensaver'

7. while were on the above - make xscreensaver pay attention to gconf
rather than app-defaults files. and make it possible to disable,
entirely, certain screensavers from the gconf.xml.mandatory settings

I think that's my list for the moment. I've been doing a lot of gnome
setup stuff over the last few days and these are some items I'd like to
have for my sanity's sake and I bet I'm not alone.

I know some of these things are completely bluesky but I also know they
are possible. :)

-sv