Re: RFC GnomeGoal #3

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 11:22 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Heya,
> 
> I've written up on GNOME Goal #3:
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoalsSaveState
> 
> Currently, a lot of applications will be using GConf to save state, like
> window sizes, whether or not a window is maximised on startup, etc.
> 
> This is against GConf policy, as GConf might be read-only, or locked
> down, but this sort of information should still be saved run-to-run.
> 
> I'm awaiting comments on this, before making it official. Vincent
> mentioned that it would be a good idea to get code to save state in a
> library, although there isn't that much code to be shared IMO.

It doesn't make sense to me that:

 - To store preferences, you use the well developed GConf API
 - To store "state" you roll your own system from scratch maybe
   using GKeyFile and a randomly named .file in the user's home
   directory.

You might want some way of marking a key in GConf as "don't show
to the administrator when they are developing a system configuration",
or you could even use an entirely different part of the GConf
hierarchy for "state" (if you can define it!). But I don't see
using a different API makes sense.

That's leaving aside the question of:

 - How to save save current state for session management. We've
   basically abandoned session management for the last 5 years;
   we need to either kill it entirely or make it easier for
   developers.

 - How to save per-document state.

I don't know if those types of state saving should involve GConf or
not ... though minimization of different APIs is definitely a
good thing!
					- Owen