Tzafrir Cohen wrote:

I actually access my imap account via ssh to the mail server ('ssh
mailserver /path/to/imapd') ...
No. What you're doing is tunneling the IMAP protocol via the ssh tty
session. Why you're doing so is quite beyond my understanding, though (a
firewall blocking the IMAP port? - but why not usual port forwarding that
ssh is so good at?).

To use ssh public-key authentication, of course. wu-imap, when run
locally, is automatically past the authentication phase
Why not run it as daemon in the first place?

The fact is that I can run my systems remotely. ssh access to a machine is
enough to do almost any administration task.
Right. But I don't talk about possible/impossible. I talk about usability and convenience and The Right Thing To Do (TM). 'ed' _is_ enough to edit any file, including configuration files. But I bet you don't use it for your sysadmin tasks. I can view an html file with 'less' and in most cases understand the contents. However, a web browser is more convenient. Electric screwdrivers weren't invented because something couldn't be done with simple mechanical tools. It's convenience and efficiency of the work that had driven their development.

I can also easily write scripts to do whatever needs automating.
How is it related to the way the config data is stored/retrieved?

No, I mentioned CUPS as a good example of the printing subsystem with a
clear printing API. Other printing systems (BSD lpr,...) don't provide API
at all. Results: enabling printing for a third-party application using
CUPS is a snap from the programming point of view.

The programs provided the API that was originally needed: |lpr
It's not API. "API" stands for application _programming_ interface. "lpr" is a command line utility.

Works well, assuming the system has a default printer configured (which
should be the standard, anyway).
It was standard twenty years ago. Today, even in a medium-sized organization there are usually a few printers available. Further, lpr/lpd has no way to alter most of the printing parameters (paper size,quality,...) so sysadmins get around it by defining several virtual queues spooling to the same device via different filters. Now, why should I teach every user that to print in letter landscape he has to use "lpr -P my_printer_letter_landscape" etc?! And do it in every application? Why the application itself can't present him with the list of printers available?

Anyway, give pdq a try. (the only print system that does not require
root!)
I played with it once. It's better than lpr in a few respects, but IMO it will fade away just as lpr will, and for the same reason - it can't be easily plugged into an existing application, because it exports no API.

I suggest you read the GConf docs
(http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/).

Interesting. But this only defines what is a valid syntax, and does not
define how to transform one valid syntax to another.
Which transformation are you talking about? And after all, there are several tools/libraries implementing XSLT.

The smart
configurator can tell you if you have made an error in configuration, but
it really does not allow any "action": if any configuration requires some
synchronization between two config keys,
Never! There should never be a need to sync two different keys! Continuing the hostname example, it should be defined in a single place, e.g. local_machine->network_settings->hostname and all scripts/daemons/apps that need the value should access it instead of duplicating the data in their specific config sections! Can you imagine ServerRoot defined more than once (for the same virtual server) in the Apache config? Wouldn't it be a nonsense? But the same nonsense is defining server's hostname separately in sendmail's, httpd's, you name it configuration files.

You can have the application put call-backs there to syncronize
those two keys
GConf provides applications with a mechanism to register callbacks which are called whenever a value is changed. So sendmail could register a callback for a local_machine->network_settings->hostname change event to take an appropariative action (e.g. restart itself as the dumbest variant).

Also: xml still doesn't allow me to easily:

*font: fixed
How is it related to XML? I can trivially rewrite any app-default file in the XML syntax, e.g.
<key name="*font" value="fixed"/>
You mix up the config data structure and the application run-time hierarchy. They shouldn't necessarily coinside (although when they do, it makes the life much easier).

And I still don't l;ike the current gconf
I don't like its _implementation_ either (though for different reasons). I'm talking about its _principles_.

Regards,

Evgeny


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