On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 12:42 +0000, Dieter wrote: > Peter> However, programs /should/ however integrate nicely with their > Peter> environment. > > Environment variables are probably the most portable way to > specify the config settings. And they are plain ASCII. And > simple (KISS).
True. And not particularly discoverable ;) > People that understand Unix hate things that are big and bloated > and/or non-portable especially is it isn't necessary. Please don't presume what I do and do not understand. I /do/ understand Unix. I don't /like/ things that are bigger than they should be. I do /detest/ things that are unnecessarily hard to use. I can write programs using libx directly -- I've done it before, just for the learning experience. Gnome and KDE programs are infinitely better than that because of all the behaviour that comes with their libraries. Things like good font support and accessibility. Things like theming. Cut and paste. Drag and drop. Shared caches for themes and configuration. Standardized (and good!) open/save dialogs. MIME databases. Icons. Cairo integration. > I'll leave > it to each reader to decide if they think Gnome is big and bloated > and/or non-portable and/or unnecessary. (Same for KDE.) For what they provide, their libraries are actually not so big, neither in an absolute sense nor as a percentage of the typical available memory today. Some of the Gnome and KDE programs are wasteful with their data memory, though. That's nasty, they shouldn't do that. > But it is also good to allow each user to do things the way they > want, as far as possible. There could easily be multiple programs > for displaying the data. The same config file should work for > all display programs. No. That would mean to derive programs the opportunity of blending seamlessly into their environment. > Then Bob can ask Carol to look at a dataset > and config file, and Carol can use a different display program but > see the same signals and markers. Should signals and markers be put into obscure config files? Some information can be put into a VCD data file as comments near the top of the file. Other kinds could/should be put into a key/value file which can be dragged and dropped and moved around the desktop. This is most decidedly not a config file. Fast loading of big VCD files would be helped by shared caching of index information between processes. Such cache files might very well be shared between programs (and libraries) and be hidden in a ~/.whatever directory. > Carol can then say "yuck" and press > a button that switches to her preferred colors, fonts, styles, and > such without otherwise changing the data displayed. -Peter _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
