From: Kevin M S. <ke...@si...> - 2005-03-28 22:33:55
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Benjamin Kahn wrote: > I've made an initial attempt at porting Gaim to GConf. The patch is > here: > > http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1172114&group_id=235&atid=300235 <snip> > Some people copy their prefs.xml file around to keep their different > machines in sync with each other. This will break them. (Esp. when > moving to and from windows machines.) > > I'm not sure how big of a deal this is. How often do you really > change your preferences? accounts and blist is still maintained > as an xml file in ~/.gaim. The gconf settings will be available > in: ~/.gconf/apps/gaim/ and can be moved around, although it is > a somewhat more manual process. > > GConf does run on Windows, and since most people running Gaim on > windows do not compile it themselves, but download it from the > Gaim web site, there is no reason not to make that version use > GConf as well. > Windows GTK does not ship with GConf as it is a gnome component, and converting to GConf is not particularly useful given that no other Windows applications use it. It would add pointless overhead for Windows Gaim users, and make the manipulation of configuration files far more complicated for them. It would make more sense to use the Windows registry, but I am firmly against that as it is just as non-portable. Another problem is this breaks the -c flag, preventing the user from specifying an alternate location for their configuration settings. Right now, all settings are contained in .gaim, and you can create a totally new profile within the same user account merely by using 'gaim -c /home/kevin/.gaim-alt'. If the data's stored in GConf, this might work for the buddy list, accounts, etc, but the preferences themselves would fail. The other question is, does this break the Fedora changes that allow a configuration file to be placed in /etc that overrides default configuration options for Gaim's initial configuration in a profile? As far as I can recall Gaim is intended to function easily on a system without GConf, such as with KDE, or with another GTK based Desktop Environment. Gaim is not intended to be a Gnome program. I don't think adding another dependency just for the hell of it is justified on any platform. Kevin |