Feedback: Panel, Applets and volatile preferences files.

[Preben Randhol <randhol pvv org>]

After installing Debian 2.2 GNU/Linux for my father I installed Helix
Gnome. Since he has just started to use computers I thought that Gnome
would be nice. And it is.

There is one concerne though and that is the applets and their
preference files. They are too volatile. That is if an applet crashes
(like the modemlights or the weather applet) the settings are lost. For
me it is just annoying as I know how to set it up again, but for my
father it is worse. I set up the modemlights so that he can use this to
connect and disconnect to the net with this. The problem is that I had
to change the settings to get it to work.

Two days after I had left modemlights crashed and the settings was lost.
I then tried to see if I could change the settings by editing the
preferences file. I was sitting 800 kilometers away with only an ssh
connection. That didn't work so in the end I had to talk him through all
the wierd settings. Luckily modemlights hasn't crashed since so it works
now (apart from a bug in the drawing of the applet).

But my point is that if this applet had a preference file that was fixed
and not just Applet_X_Extern, then it probably would have worked to just
start the applet up again.

Hope this helps. Thanks in advance.

-- 
Preben Randhol -- [randhol@pvv.org] -- <http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/>
+---+ "There was, I think, never any reason to  believe in any innate
| ! |  superiority of the male, except his superior muscle."
+---+      -- Bertrand Russell, Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind (1950)