Re: New menu standard

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> How much memory is it going to add to every process every user runs?
> And, why is this IPC mechanism needed?
> 
> I don't see how it's easier to insert into an environment variable
> than into a file... (and is it possible to change env vars on all
> platofrms, e.v. ones without "setenv()" in C?)

Plus environment variables are pretty damn flakey in terms of consistent
user interface. Its not clear where to set them, and every program will
do it in a different place resulting in some .csh or .bash or login
profile somewhere. That sucks. You can't write programs to change that
sort of thing.

I can think of numerous cases where environment variables have resulted
in flakey interfaces. For example, think of GDM's language selector. It
doesn't work on I don't know how many distributions which have their own
custom language logic that resets the bloody env vars during login after
GDM already set them. Net result: the user doesn't know where to set the
language. *I* can't even figure it own for Debian (it works on some
systems, it doesn't on others).

Can we please store this in a way so I can actually check a hardcoded
file to see what the setting is rather than guessing where in the code
path the setting is set?!? In the end this is all stored in files anyway
(its just code, not a settings file), lets store with a little
structure.

-Seth