[Compcomm] My ideas (for the record)

[Mike Dransfield]

Franz Rogar wrote:
>
> So what you're sayin' is this:
> - Drop libccs
>   
Yes
> - Edit ccsm to "talk" directly against gconf and ini
>   
No, using dbus is preferable.  Talking directly would mean it
would need to be upgraded each time a new backend was written
or that file format was changed.

Admittedly this is not often, but dbus is there so we might as
well use it.  There are extra benefits like being able to list
unloaded plugins (even if they do not follow lib*.so format).

Theres nothing wrong with a gnome app linking directly to
gconf, but if you want a generic GUI then using dbus is best.
> ??
>
> That'd be good but an abstraction layer to take care of backend
> storage structure is still needed so you can still be using of them
> (even change: "today I want to use gconf and tomorrow, ini" ) so any
> form of libccs should still be needed (call it "wrapper", as ex)
>   
The dbus plugin (or the fuse) plugin both act as abstraction
layers.  I regularly switch between ini and gconf to test certain
things and dbus based apps always work.  They would even
work with ccp as the backend.

The only problem is that you cannot change the settings unless
compiz is running, David wants to work around this, I do not
think it would be too hard, its just nobody has bothered yet
because its a fairly small feature.

> About the python dependency: I don't think python itself can be
> selected as "dependency" because LSB is about (if not yet) to mark it
> to mandatory ;)
>
> Also, I still think that mayority will not edit the backend
> configuration stored files manually and they'll use some kind of GUI,
> and, atm, none but ccp has a human-alike one.
>   

Yes, probably.  I dont think I agree on what form that
GUI will take, I think there should always be a way to modify
the settings with standard tools if all else fails or there is
an advanced option which is not in the GUI.

All linux apps AFAIK follow this principle of human-editable
text underneath with a GUI on top.

Have you ever read cpp's config files?  If thats human-like
then I am a robot.

ccs is not user-friendly either.  It is DEVELOPER friendly
because it is autogenerated so requires the least amount
of code, but it does not produce user friendly GUIs.  For
proper usability you must hand code and design it.