Application Settings for XFCE 4.6

[Jasper Huijsmans]

Alexandre Moreira wrote:
>> No, someone interested in bringing this forward should try it out and
>> tell us what it does and why we should use it (or why not).
>>
>>  From the sparse info on that website, it sounds like a configuration
>> frontend, with a default GConf backend, which is probably not what we
>> want ;-)
>>     
>
> I did a slightly further check with it, and gave a look at its source
> code. What I found out is:
>
> It is a configuration front end with 2 default backends (GConf and
> ini-like files) and an in development KDE Configuration one. It has
> not much features: It simply allows applications to handle their
> configs without thinking about the backends they use.
>
> It has the concept of a default backend, set by a config file, which
> can be modified in a global, per-user and per-application (using an
> env var) basis.
>
> I don't know what Xfce's MCS capabilities are, so I am not a good
> person to discuss if it can fulfill Xfce's needs or not.
>
> If anyone can list me what Xfce's needs are, I can check out whether
> this can handle it or not.
>
> By the way, the configs are defined with a pair of 3 strings: Domain
> (the application name usually, set when we get a mcs context), Section
> (at least I call it section because of the ini-like file), and Key
> name.
>
> It seems to be able to handle basic tree-like configs, such as Windows
> Registry and Ini files, but I don't know how it would behave if we
> needed some more complex hierarquical data, like some arbitrary XML.
>
> It has no sort of config notification, so, if we need it we can rule it out.
>
>   
Yes, you are right, it is important to know what a future Xfce 
configuration system should look like. I'm not sure we already know this.

The biggest problem with mcs is probably that the settings daemon for 
global settings is the same process as the settings dialogs, which makes 
it bigger than necessary and less flexible. Other people may have more 
ideas about this. I think Benny once did some work on a possible 
replacement.

When I think about a future global configuration system, it's usually 
something like this:
- small daemon holding the configuration data with a communication 
protocol to get/set value.
- main dialog displaying available configuration dialogs based on 
.desktop files. The separate dialogs could be a separate program or just 
something like 'xfce4-panel --customize '.

There is a dependency on X for the so-called XSETTINGS (gtk, icons, 
mouse, keyboard) that might be hard to get rid of.

    Jasper