jiho wrote:
I think that this issue relates to something that was already discussed several times before, which is: is it better to favour identical behaviour for Inkscape on all platforms or to integrate it as much as possible in the conventions of each platform? I, for one, strongly lean toward the second possibility. I think the most common scenario, by far, is people using Inkscape on *one* platform, rather than on several different ones. And it would make the life of those people a lot easier if the conventions of their platform of choice were respected. Of course, it will make support more complicated, but the support community of Inkscape is wide and probably can cover that (plus, if you tell users to go and check their preferences file and that they don't know where it is, it is not Inkscape support they need, but basic platform support). On this particular "preferences" question, I have a long standing to-do which is to move the preferences from .inkscape to ~/Library/Preferences/Inkscape/ as it should be on OS X. I believe it is a good idea because it is the first place people will look for them, it does not require resorting to the terminal to access them, it would get along well with backup systems and many other stuff that are standard on OS X. I just never got around to doing it. I also think that gconf is based on a marvellous concept and that it should be generalised, with an even more user friendly interface, to all linux desktops; so if Inkscape can push towards this way on Gnome at least, that would be great... but that is a personal opinion of course ;)
JiHO
I disagree about most users only using one platform, maybe I'm just basing it on my experience to much but for a long while I was using Linux and Windows. I wonder what percent of devs use more than one platform.
Anyway where the preference file is stored on each platform is not the issue never has been(except for XDG compliance) , the issue is different backends to store preferences for what is essentially the same platform Linux but with Gnome or KDE installed. What happens if both are install? Do my preference depend on if I'm running Gnome to use gconf? Does KDE use the XML or gconf backend? So a basic question is will my settings stay the same across Gnome and KDE sessions without extra effort (Yes, I use both. I find Gnome to be more power efficient when on battery then KDE4). So now instead of one possible way for this platform there are two. I think the gconf backend should be opt-in not opt-out that way it has to be a something the user sets and will know they set.
I hope I have explained my concerns well enough so everyone understands.
Joshua L. Blocher verbalshadow