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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE 1.2 configuration management
From:       Matthias Elter <me () main-echo ! net>
Date:       1999-01-03 21:12:20
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>IMO, distributors should know what they are doing enough to do at least this.
>If you want to provide a nice KDE setup other than the app defaults, you can
>just create a user, login and start KDE, then set everything up. Then you just
>package .kde as part of yuour account skeleton. You can delete the things that
>should be generated automatically (ie. kfm's magic file) if you like.
>
>If you want to revert to app defaults for everything, you just nuke .kde
>entirely. I think Roberto pointed out this option already :-)

Yes thats true but I think we need a tool to help the user reset apps to their
defaults. Do you think a newbie does know where he finds the configuration
files? What I mean is it's just not simple enough to be a good solution for a
beginner.

>
>>I'm
>>furthermore missing a tool (perhaps a kcontrol module) to reset the settings of
>>single or all apps to their default settings. I was thinking about several ways
>>to improve the current situation and I was talking with Matthias Hoelzer about
>>this yesterday. I want to propose the following improvements for KDE 1.2:
>>
>>- add a subdir $KDEDIR/share/skel that holds default settings for all KDE
>>   apps.
>>
>>- keep a global 'skel' subdir in all kde packages (kdebase,kdeutils...) which
>>   holds default configuration files for every app in the package and gets
>>   make installed into the KDE skel dir.
>>
>> - the structure of the skel subdir should look like this:
>>   skel
>>   skel/app1.skel
>>   skel/app1
>>   skel/app1/...(keep all config files for app1 here)
>>   skel/app2.skel
>>   skel/app2
>>   skel/app2/...(keep all config files for app2 here)
>>   The .skel files are in KDE config file format and contain information on
>>   what subdirs in the Users Home dir  an app needs and where the config files
>>   go.
>>
>>- An example kfm.skel file could look like (it's using the KDE config file
>>   format to make it readable with KSimpleConfig):
>>   ---
>>   [Directories]
>>   dir1=$HOME/.kde
>>   dir2=$HOME/.kde/share
>>   dir3=$HOME/.kde/share/config
>>   dir4=$HOME/.kde/share/apps
>>   dir5=$HOME/.kde/share/apps/kfm
>>   dir6=$HOME/Desktop
>>   dir7=$HOME/Desktop/Trash
>>   dir8=$HOME/Desktop/Templates
>>   dir9=$HOME/Desktop/Autostart
>>   [Files]
>>   file1=kfmrc-->$HOME/.kde/share/config/kfmrc
>>   file2=Device.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/Device.kdelnk
>>   file3=Ftpurl.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/Ftpurl.kdelnk
>>   file4=MimeType.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/MimeType.kdelnk
>>   file5=Programm.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/Programm.kdelnk
>>   file6=URL.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/URL.kdelnk
>>   file7=WWWUrl.kdelnk-->$HOME/Desktop/Templates/WWWUrl.kdelnk
>>   ---
>>
>>- Add some funktionality to the KApplikation constructor to parse the .skel file
>>   for the current app, to check wether all needed directories and files
>>   exist, install defaults if not and inform the user in one dialog what has
>>   been done (a nice side effect is that this for example prevents kfm to
>>   display 5 single dialogs for the dirs it creates on the first startup.)
>>
>>- Write a small tool (I have already done this for testing porpose) that gets
>>   called with an appname as argument, checks wether all config files and dirs
>>   are there and installs missing files from the skel dir. Add a -force option
>>   to this app and you just need to write a nice frontend to get a tool that
>>   helps the user reset an apps config to default settings.
>>
>>This should solve all the problems I have explained above!
>
>Since everything should run for the first time without any config files/dirs, 
>does this really add any functionality? It doesn't look like it to me...

It provides the user with good default settings from the first app start on. I
think this adds functionallity.

Matthias

--------------------------------------------------------
Matthias Elter     me@main-echo.net
Computer Science Student University of Wuerzburg Germany

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