Re: Latest Mandrake
>>>>> "Manoj" == Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:
Eray> Looks like that, the UIs write output to config files which you
Eray> can edit, but it was easier to use the front ends.
Manoj> Well, easier is highly subjective. I am not convinced yet that
Manoj> the GUI based stuff is an actuall improvement; in putting together
Manoj> her tenure package, my wife had set up a header to show some details
Manoj> and a horizontal rule. When trying to replicate that in another
Manoj> document in the package, we couldn't -- we did not remember what
Manoj> path down the menu system we had taken. Took us a couple of hours to
Manoj> recreate the headers just right.
Manoj> Anyway, what you said is good news. So, One can set up things
Manoj> with the front end, and edit it with ae in an emergency. Can we then
Manoj> go back to using the front end? Or shall the front end discard our
Manoj> hand crafted changes?
That brings to mind trying to write a peice of code in XEmacs that
uses the `customize' interface. It was difficult to hand build the
data structure I'd defined via customize in the *scratch* buffer.
I'd `defvar' it, then `M-x customize' it to see if it was right (to
set the program defaults it will ship with) and it would display that
as an sexp rather than with the fancy widgets because I had the
nesting layout wrong.
The thing is that if the read format is too complex, it's easy to get
it wrong. A GUI tool can be made once to parse it right, but then
you edit and it can no longer read that back in correctly.
It would be really cool if everything on the system used a central
configuration data engine of some kind.
(don't say "registry")
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