xffm settings and mcs

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi Edscott,

Actually I don't care about what settings should shared and what other
should not.

But I do care when the same setting is accessed from both ways and that
should be avoided.

Cheers,
Olivier.

On Sat, 2003-05-10 at 17:46, edscott wilson garcia wrote:
> Hi Olivier,
> 
> El sáb, 10-05-2003 a las 08:10, Olivier Fourdan escribió:
> > On Sat, 2003-05-10 at 07:42, edscott wilson garcia wrote:
> > 
> > > It was not difficult to exclude it from being saved, or even kept in
> > > memory. 
> > 
> > 
> > I think I know why I see many problems with the way xffm settings work
> > (or at least don't work the way I wish)
> > 
> > If I understand well, xffm and the mcs-plugin share the same
> > configuration file. That's no good at all.
> > 
> > When using mcs, the app must delegate the settings to mcs and just react
> > to value changes. The application can have and manage its own separate
> > configuration file, but not for the same purpose (think of xfce4-panel,
> > settings are stored in mcs, while menu contents aren't)
> 
> I see. Except that there are some settings that the user may want to
> apply to either a single xffm instance, or apply to all running xffm
> instances whether the owner of the xfce-mcs process owns all the xffm
> processes or not. The only shared configuration items between xffm and
> mcs are icontheme and iconsize (Although Danny's suggestion today
> implies sharing more of them).
> 
> > 
> > So, to make things right in xffm, I believe that xffm should not set or
> > read any params that are managed by mcs, and leave the mcs manager save
> > data on its own (just like all other tools do) - FYI mcs is able to save
> > an entire channel to an xml file and load it afterwards with a single
> > function call. Moreover, it doesn't depend on libxml2 at all.
> 
> It would make life easier. The get_config/write_config would be
> simplified by removing iconsize and icontheme from the xfce-mcs manager,
> but, see below.... 
> 
> > 
> > xffm particularily has a lot to gain by using mcs: typically, many
> > different instances of xffm can be run on the same display, some on
> > different hosts, some on the same host. mcs will serve all instances
> > with the same settings, wherever they reside.
> 
> This is where things get complicated. I suppose some users would like to
> have the same theme and icon size for all xffm instances. But I do not.
> I use different themes and sizes for different users and hosts. That way
> I can tell at a glance whether "root" or "edscott" owns xffm or whether
> it's running on "sagitario" or "huitzilopochtli". 
> 
> In order to leave open both possibilities, iconsize and icontheme are
> currently managed from both xffm and mcs. If you change configuration
> from mcs, it will affect all instances. If you do it from xffm, it will
> only affect the user and machine of that particular xffm.
> 
> > 
> > >From the application, having a "Edit->preferences" menu is just calling
> > mcs on the given plugin (exactly like xfce4-panel does)
> > 
> > Then comes the special cases like setting the "home dir". I think this
> > is wrong anyway, so I wouldn't mind see such things go away. Call it
> > differently, use the cmd line option to pass a base dir, but it's
> > definitely not a setting.
> 
> I believe you have two different things confused. Using the command line
> to pass a base_dir is not the "home_dir" in the settings. The home_dir
> sets the directory which xffm goes to when the "home" button (or
> keyboard ctrl-home) is pressed. If no base dir is specified it will
> default to home_dir. The base dir is only used once at startup and, as
> you noted, is not a setting. I think the mix up is due to the fact that
> some time ago there was a xffm-bug where specifying the base_dir would
> set the home_dir to base_dir, but that was fixed, AFAIK. 
> 
> > 
> > I think xffm would benefit a lot from such a cleanup.
> 
> I regard the double funtionality for iconsize and icontheme as a bonus.
> But if you think the double functionality should be removed, that will be 
> easy to accomplish.I would keep the setting from within xffm, since that 
> is the one I use the most. Let me know if ---after all my explanations---
> you're still convinced iconsize and icontheme should be removed from the 
> mcs and I will proceed accordingly.
> 
> saludos,
> 
> Edscott
> 
> 
> 
> > Cheers,
> > -- 
> > Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at xfce.org>
> > http://www.xfce.org
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
> > http://moongroup.com/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
> > 
> 
> 
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-- 
Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at xfce.org>
http://www.xfce.org