Lee Braiden wrote:
This would have a number of advantages:
- An upgrade to inkscape that introduces new preferences or new defaults for
usability reasons would not be 'lost' by upgraders who have saved different choices on specific items.
- If a user had deliberately chosen a feature they liked, even if it was
already the default, it would remain even if an upgrade changed that default for everyone else.
I think the preferences change after an upgrade is a non-issue: the application wide preferences are kept in ~/.inkscape/preferences.xml and are not affected by upgrade or even uninstall. Also, document level preferences are kept inside the document so not affected by upgrade.
- Sharing documents for collaboration would be easier, since you wouldn't be
sharing all of your personal preferences in the document, but just what is important for that document itself.
Here I can't follow you: is about more or less preferences to be saved inside the document?
- Code-duplication would be reduced, since the document-preferences and
application-preferences would be virtually identical. With clever architecture, it might be also/instead possible to use the same preferences for tool dialogs/panels/rollups in the main window.
I am not so sure about the reduction of code-duplication, as in the most cases application and document preferences are disjunct groups, for example why save inside the document (and bloat the file) settings like the default number of corners in a star or display style of gradient cues?