editing xfce4rc

[Don Christensen]

Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
> 
>> 040621 Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
>>
>>> purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
>>>
>>>> wanting to swap  2  panel-launcher items
>>>> -- one is in the panel itself, the other in the list in the drawer -- ,
>>>> i edited  ~/.xfce4/xfce4rc  & swapped the relevant lines therein.
>>>> however, even after a reboot the old version of the panel remained
>>>> & somehow XFCE had replaced my edited version with the old one.
>>>> surely, i sb able to edit a config file to my taste & have it obeyed.
>>>
>>> First log out, then edit the file.
>>
>> yes, thanx, that did strike me later, after i had sent in my query.
>>
>>> The panel saves its configuration on exit.
>>
>> is there a reason why it does that ?
> 
> Can't remember, perhaps ;-)
> 
>> would it not be better if it saved it whenever the user makes changes ?
>>
> 
> Sounds reasonable, but I'm not entirely sure this will not break some 
> plugins or miss some changes (position).
> 
>     Jasper

On a somewhat related note, it would be nice if the configuration was
not saved when it was changed due to some kind of error.  For example,
I recently deleted all of the installed xfce apps on my system (I'm
living on the bleeding edge with CVS HEAD and want to make sure I am
not getting any left-over bits in the install tree) and then re-installed
them all.  After logging out and back in, the "goodies" plugins were
missing from my panel since I had forgotten to reinstall them.  After
installing them, I logged out and back in, only to be faced with
having to re-add and reconfigure all of my "goodies", since they
had been removed from my panel configuration when I logged out.

Perhaps you could have some sort of "dirty" flag that gets set whenever
a user-initiated change in the panel configuration occurs.  Then only
save the config on exit if the dirty flag is set.  This is just a thought,
I have no idea whether this is feasible in the code.

-Don

-- 
Don Christensen       Senior Software Development Engineer
djc at cisco.com         Cisco Systems, Santa Cruz, CA
   "It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."