xffm settings and mcs

[edscott wilson garcia]

Hey Olivier,

El jue, 08-05-2003 a las 17:09, Olivier Fourdan escribió:
> Hi Edscott,
> 
> I've changed the mcs-plugin for xffm to use a nice editable treeview
> instead of the ugly text entries for env .variable (see screenshot)

It looks nicer (I never did like the way it looked before).

> 
> The env. variable stuff don't work anyway. xffm complains "Invalid
> Argument:TERM=<whatever I type>"

Maybe the keypressed handler is sending something screwy now that it's
an editable treeview. I don't have internet at the moment so my CVS is
not up to date (I'll be pressing the "send" button tommorrow).

> 
> Btw, I think this particular mcs-plugin is all broken! Your plugin
> doesn't seem to save or load its values, nowhere... mcs API provides
> transparent hooks to save and load channel setting to XML files, but you
> need to call the routines for this to work.

Actually I don't think it's the plugin that's broken, but rather my 
idea of the plugin. As you have probably noticed, it has changed
drastically from time to time, which just shows that I don't have a
clear idea of how it should work. The plugin could definitely benefit
from everybody's help.

> 
> I still think the use of env variable is not needed at all, since it's
> the job of mcs: mcs is independent of the host, values are shared
> between all apps that run on the display, whatever host there are
> running on.
> 
> I cannot figure what the use of environment variable provides that mcs
> doesn't.


I used environment variables because the coding is easier for me. Just a
simple "getenv()" where required, instead of adding variables to the 
associated structures. Whenever I change libs/types.h to add variables
to the  associated structures, "make" will recompile everything, and on
a slow machine that's a real pain. Throwing the variable to the
environment, and later retrieving it when necessary, means that only one
or two modules need to be recompiled. That way I cut down drastically on
development time. 

The environment variables were not meant to be saved by mcs, but rather
inherited by the mcs from its parent process. This is what I thought at
the coding time and may or may not have been a good idea. The theme and
default icon size were being saved, so if they not anymore then
something got broken. 

saludos,

Edscott