proposal for extending XSETTINGS registry keys

[Matthias Clasen]

On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 16:46 +0200, Marius Bugge Monsen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> At the Desktop Architects Meeting 3, beginning of December last year, Waldo 
> asked me if I could write a proposal for extending the XSETTINGS registry 
> keys.

I'm not sure there is a big need for extension here, though, and I'm a
bit wary of extending the spec before it is even used in more than one
toolkit. The important step here is to actually have a second xsettings
implementation using the current keys, then we can have a careful look
at what Gtk/ keys can be shared.

> I've written a small paper where I look at the Gtk+ and Qt settings and color 
> palettes to find where they overlap, and where the common subsets need to be 
> extended to be useful. The result is a proposed set of new settings keys for 
> the XSETTINGS registry.
>
> The document is available here:
> http://www.pvv.org/~mariusbu/proposal.html

I don't see any proposed new keys there though, just a list of currently
used keys. Also, to make informed decisions about what keys can be
shared, you need to provide some information about the allowed values
and how their semantics. I'd be happy to provide this information for
the XSettings used by GTK+.

The document also lists the GtkSettings properties, which are a superset
of the XSettings that GTK+ reacts to. Some of them are not suitable as
XSettings though, and some are just implementation details, e.g. the
"color-hash" property is just a more convenient form for the
Gtk/ColorPalette XSetting.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to actually using XSettings for cross-tookit
sharing, as it was originally envisioned.

Matthias