"Defaults" button in every settings screen

[Andrzej]

On 12/10/2011 06:49 AM, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
>
>> The *only* actual problem I have with XFCE settings is that whenever
>> I want to rearrange my panels or plugins I *have to* break my current
>> setup. If only I was able to temporarily disable panels and/or
>> plugins (rather than delete them) that would make this whole issue go
>> away entirely, at least as far as I'm concerned.
>
> I think you're aiming to high here. What you want is undo/redo features
> for the configuration of an entire set of applications. That would be
> ridiculously hard to implement
[...]

Jannis, in the email above I actually came to the very same conclusion. 
Any advanced desktop-wide mechanism (undo, a configuration profile 
subsystem) would be too hard implement and not really that useful. 
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.

My biggest (only!) gripe with the configuration mechanism (panel plugins 
configuration) can be easily solved by other means - adding "enable" 
checkboxes to the panel and its plugins. That's BTW what Firefox does 
with its addons, for the very same reason. I may even go ahead and try 
to implement it in my local repo.

>> Other potential targets for a "special treatment" are keyboard
>> shortcuts and session/autostart configuration. They also are rather
>> laborious to set up and some users may change them heavily or
>> frequently.
>
> It would be easy to write an external tool that dumps the configuration
> of a selection of apps to a file and thereby allows people to go back
> and forth in their configuration history. But the decision which
> parts to remember and when, and also when to go back/forward would have
> to be made by the user.

First, I don't really care about these two (keyboard shortcuts and 
session management) but I think they are "special" in the way that they 
are both quite laborious to set up and this may affect many users.

Note that the xfwm keyboard shortcuts dialog already has its own "reset 
to defaults" button. And, of course, the "session" config has a "save" 
button.

What I propose to do with these two parts is to:

- sessions: change the "save" button into "save..." one and add a 
"load..." button.

- keyboard shortcuts: do the same with the "reset to defaults" button.

Neither of the above changes seems like a hard thing to do. What do you 
think about it?

Andrzej