Re: New gnome-libs stuff (need help from you guys)

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Fri, Apr 23, 1999 at 02:11:33PM -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > 1) impossible for the panel to > use,
> 
> It is possible for you to use it.

panel doesn't see the file ... in fact there is no file most of the time ...
it just happens that the .desktop files can be stored on disk as well ...
metadata doesn't work this way

also this information needs to be editable from the dentry-edit widget which
rules out use of metadata in the first place unless you put in large ugly
hacks

> > 4) won't work over network.
> 
> Why not?

metadata, as far as I understand it won't work if the .desktop is on nfs ...
and you're working from different platforms ...

not to mention that I might just want to edit this all in one place with a
text editor ...

metadata doesn't work 100% reliably on a unix system ... the .desktops do ...
all data relating to starting and information about a program should be in
the .desktop ... it's easier to use, distribute, the data can't be lost by
the user copying the file ... it's easier to edit you can store it without
actually having any file on disk ...

Making the panel use metadata stored on the executable or on the .desktop is
a hack which I'm not willing to put into the panel for it's ugliness

if .desktops are ugly then we'd have to get rid of them completely (in which
case the panel would duplicate dentry code anyhow since it needs to store
this data in gnome_cofig format in the first place without files on disk) ...
.desktop's may not be perfect, but they work and they work well ...

Miguel ... you're just overusing the metadata ... metadata is for storing
simple information that won't hurt if it gets lost or doesn't need to be
manipulated from outside too much ... We should avoid using metadata for
things where we can use more reliable means of doing things ... metadata will
never be reliable and will never work correctly on a unix type system ...
it's ok if you want to store a location of a file icon in a file manager
window or make some particular file be launched with a different application
or whatnot ... however for data that doesn't need to be associated with a
specific file ... they should not be used as they will never be a robust way
of storing data ...

George

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  The following implements RSA in perl and is illegal to export from the US:

          #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
          $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
          lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)