Request for clarification on menu/file spec

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 07 February 2006 16:56, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> Watch out what you ask for, you may get it. 

;)

> With such scheme it means that 
> after installing 6 applications your search path for a number of resources
> also becomes 6 path's longer. 

this is what we have caches for, though, right? so that the extra paths only 
come into play, performance wise, on cache updates.

> It also means that applications (in KDE's 
> case kded) will need to be modified to watch /etc/xdg.conf in order to pick
> up new applications. 

yes. though that's easy enough to do.

> Apart from that there will be a transition period in 
> which only recent applications/distributions will support /etc/xdg.conf.

the sooner we start, though ... ;)

> If there is concensus that that is the right long term direction and that
> the benefits outweigh the disadvantages then I guess we should go that way.
> I would like to hear some more cheers of support for that direction first
> though.

the only concern i have is whether or not it's easy enough for 3rd party apps 
to modify an xdg.conf file. i don't see why it wouldn't be, but i can see 
scenarios happening where 2 apps both add the same path causing useless 
clutter.

i wonder if we shouldn't provide some simple command line tools to add/remove 
paths. this way in the future if we change course again ISVs won't have to 
change what they do (just call "addxdgdatadir /the/new/path" or 
what-have-you), we'll just update the tools. this would have the added bonus 
of Getting It Right(tm) without app developers having to do much work.

thoughts?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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