[Glade-users] General Programming for Glade APplication

[mail at sphinx.net.ru (Dmitry Dzhus)]

> Not having programed in Linux before, what are the Standards for a
> Linux application for programm specific settings?
Good tradition and widely-applied practise is to store user settings
in dotfiles in plain text format in home directory. If your app needs
to store several (configuration) files, create a dot-directory in user's
home folder to store configuration in:

in case of single file:

     /home/homer/.gdndstat

in case of several app-related files:

     /home/homer/.gdndstat/config
     /home/homer/.gdndstat/stat

> Do I have to manually check, create and read a file that I create and
> update the settings in my own format (AKA: Re: Recreating the wheel)?
In case you're coding in Python, you might get interested in this:
<http://docs.python.org/lib/module-ConfigParser.html>. In case of other
languages, google will help to find some tiny generic library to
process plaintext configs, I guess.

Using gconf would add unnecessary GNOME dependencies in addition to
fact that it may be hard to edit gconf xml files by hand. If you
cannot edit program's settings by hand easily with text editor, it
sucks (IMO).

Also, it's a _good_ idea to provide command-line options to override
configuration file settings.

Please also consider reading this:

       http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/configurationchapter.html
-- 
Happy Hacking.

Dmitry "Sphinx" Dzhus
http://sphinx.net.ru