On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 12:10 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > Bleh, I hate mailing here ... so here goes nothing[1] > > Only for people who are interested in the implementation and design of > what we are going to be calling "dconf".
I'd like to clarify something about how I, personally*, view the project "dconf" when comparing it with existing projects like KConfig, GConf and UniConf today. There's an extremely important difference (today). And that difference is that projects like UniConf, KConfig and GConf, are projects that are usable today and for which your contributions will or might be in use in a near future. So if you are planning to build on a configuration management infrastructure and you want to see your code being used (or usable) as quickly as possible, "dconf" is not the project for you. The project "dconf" can be viewed as a research project. My plans are to design and implement an Utopical system and see what happens. A first release will just be a prototype. And maybe some desktop environment community might pick it up. Or might only pick up the (new) ideas. Maybe none will pickup anything from "dconf". Also note that I never promised nor said dconf will ever be in a usable state. So don't count on it. Don't reply to the UniConf people: "Oh we don't want to integrate with you guys because there's some dudes trying to do DConf". If you want to: do it. Please note that infrastructures like GConf and KConfig (and UniConf) fulfill their requirements. They are usable and they do exactly what they are suppose to do. The project "dconf" is not about trying to prove that they aren't. The project "dconf" is, in my humble opinion of course*, about researching what's possible. About researching how to go to the next level in configuration management infrastructure. It's not about configuration management today. I think that the future of "informatics at home" isn't only about the desktop. I think it will be (more) about electronic (home) devices that will also need some personalised configuration. The desktop might play a role, yes. Maybe even an important one. But I'd like to build and research a configuration infrastructure that can be used in the future. So it's not just about configuring your E-mail application and browser. It's about making sure your car and personal data assistant will also receive your E-mails, IM messages and video conferencing without forcing the user into configuring hundreds of devices and duplicated settings (in the Utopical idea that we'll have wireless Internet in all the big cities of this world sooner or later). And sure UniConf and GConf and KConfig can do that. But they aren't doing this today. So the research is also about: why aren't they? And the answer is probably: because none of them have been designed to become an "environment neutral" standard. And none of them have the potential nor willingness by it's developers to become one. Expect, perhaps, UniConf has the willingness to become such a standard. But we'll have to see if they also have the potential. And I'm not saying they don't. I'm not even trying to make it look like that. I hope this is now clarified. * This is probably not how every dconf team member views it. -- Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ X-Tend home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org work: vanhoof at x-tend.be http://www.pvanhoof.be/ _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
