xml config files

[Guido Draheim]

speaking about new developments.

How much would one allow to break with config files from xfc3 ?

I'd start to prepare a little libconfig that every app in xfce
can use, using a similar interface as most of the other desktops
use as a programmer api (open-config, moveto-section, read-entry),
but returning the xml-string-node. That's not hard, but the
actual problems come in when trying to be backward compatible,
as I tried with the example code for xfce4rc, where both the
new and old configfiles are read and write, under the expectation
that the new version and old version are run in parallel, as
it can easily happen in networked environments where your $HOME
gets mounted from some distant server, but the local machine
has different xfce versions. With a brandnew desktop, we would
have the chance to abolish the old configfiles, and rule that
the new desktop does not update them when there are changes
in the config of the xfce4 variants of our programs. On setup
of the xfce4 desktop, one can let run an external program
that converts the xfc3 configfiles to the new (and different)
xfce4 configfiles, just once, and not dynamic from the programs
the themselves. Does that sound like a good plan?

cheers,
-- guido                            http://freespace.sf.net/guidod