Re: new thread! new thread!

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Thu, 2001-09-06 at 02:00, Seth Nickell wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Yes, I agree that you want control over the fonts in your web browser.
> The problem is that most of the places the "html viewer" is used is in
> applications like RedCarpet or Evolution where they aren't really a web
> browser. When GtkHTML is used to make interfaces (a practice I abhor,
> but a fact we may have to live with) its not clear to me that changing
> the web browser font *should* affect the font size. When GtkHTML is used
> in an interface context it should use the GTK font.
> 

I concur, using HTML to make non-web interfaces is bad.

> Suz and I have been talking over one solution to "Default
> Applications"...which is to create an "Applications" category parallel
> to "Main". Each general class of application can have an entry e.g. "Web
> Browser", "Email", "Text Editor", "Word Processor"... The preferences
> contained in these dialogues will control what application to use for
> this class (for example, Web Browser might have the choice between
> Mozilla, Galeon, Netscape 4, and Encompass, of course omitting
> applications which are not installed). Also it will have preferences
> which are common to those applications, for example Web Browser might
> have proxy settings (probably those should eventually be universal, but
> for now I think web browsers and Nautilus are the only applications that
> support this), default home page, etc. There are some issues with this,
> like making sure applications don't get out of sync with the preference
> etc, but at least with GNOME applications this should be feasible
> (certainely in the long run).
> 

This has been the province of environment variables. To see an example
and more documentation on what we already have try these commands:

PAGER=more man 7 environ

PAGER=less man 7 environ

(This assumes you have more, less, man, and that page in that place.
Works on Debian Sid GNU/Linux ;-)

This is not to say that we should have the user sourcing environment
variable, but that we have a system in place and deep integration would
be nice. What we already have might provide some ideas on how to do
this. To see a bad example >:-)  try this command:

PAGER=gless man 7 environ

(gless doesn't format correctly, I don't know why. (yet))

Another way:
One of my many dropped projects, PCP - Project Control Panel, was to use
'Matchers' for file control. The matchers were to work on any
discernable attribute of a file: type, MIME-type, name, regexp on any of
these, etc. If two matchers matched the same file, the more specific one
would be used; if that failed, the user would be notified of an error
and given the opportunity to correct it or just choose. Each matcher had
four parts: (1) the matching expression, (2) a viewer, (3) an editor,
(4) an executor. Failing to have a matcher would fall through to
environment variables and failing that to some wicked but guaranteed
default like 'ed'.


> I think I generally oppose the idea of dumping *all* application
> preferences into a Control Center category, preferences for a particular
> application should really be in that application itself.
> 

Indeed. Let's also not forget that some
options/prefs/settings/whatever-we-call-ems must be removeable from the
user's control since administered systems are still a large market.
(This can be a compile time option though, call 'em Enterprise Editions
or something :-)

> cheers,
> 
> -Seth
> 

Cheers,
Greg merchan
(auspex)