autostart spec, round 2!

Thiago Macieira thiago at kde.org
Mon Oct 23 22:06:22 EEST 2006


Dan Winship wrote:
>> I'd argue that since this is the way Kiosk has worked for several
>> years, it is the way sysadmins would expect.
>
>Well, it's what KDE sysadmins would expect. But if you've never used
>kiosk, and just read the XDG base dirs spec and the autostart spec, then
>you're left with files in "less important" directories overriding files
>in "more important" directories, which is definitely confusing.

Maybe it's just a matter of how you read it. Instead of "less 
important"/"lower priority" and "more important"/"higher priority", 
admins should read $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS as a left-to-right processing:

Anything to the right can override anything to the left, unless that left 
stops the processing. It's like CSS's !important tag: the cascade stops.

Also note that the whole idea behind the [$i] option is to stop the 
override from a directory that is processed earlier. It's a way of 
inverting the priority, by raising one entry over all others. As far as I 
understand it, anyone using it would be *wanting* this behaviour. 
Otherwise, the normal cascade should already suffice.

Finally, you could add a third entry to the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS with files 
that contain only [$i], removing them from previous files. It might look 
more "natural" this way.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
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