.pdrc for Windows WAS: Re: [PD] pd 0.37.1 Windows installer release candidate

[zmoelnig at iem.at]

Zitiere Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at eds.org>:

> >
> >> the users-preferences should overwrite the system defaults. (but why
> ?
> >> it just makes more sense to me), but they should really be merged.
> >
> > Can you be more clear on what you call overwrite (you probably mean
> > override) and what's the difference with merged
> 
> For simplicity's sake, its probably best to have the system .pdrc  
> ignored if the user sets one.

but that is just my point: of course it is not important to *you* when you are
in a single-user single-host environment.
but i am not and i am looking for a way to handle this correctly:
multiple users have multiple preferences (mainly library and path settings)
mutliple hosts have also multiple preferences (mainly based on their hardware)
i *really* think there should be a way to handle both of these preferences (even
in terms of simplicity)

looking at 2 very different operating systems i notice:
a) linux (and i do think: most if not all unix-style os's including macOS): many
applications share the users .rc file and an /etc/rc file to separate system and
users preferences
b) windows: in the system-registry there are 2 major branches: HKEY_LOCAL_USER
and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (or so) to represent these 2 preferences too

so i ask: why do we think that any known modern OS that can handle multiple
users does separate user- and host-preferences ?
do we have to be more clever than all those people who have written os's for
years ? just for "simplicity".

> I like this option as including another conf file, rather than  
> replacing the existing one.

hmm. 
i am not sure about this because i don't see the reason ("for simplicity" ;-))
if i'd wanted to include several rcfiles i could use several "-rcfile"-options.
i just think it is more flexible.
and it gives the user the power to ignore (say) the systemwide rcfile without
having to know it.

and there are some options that cannot be undone with other options, so merging
will not be very flexible in this way.


> As for the .bat files, I say ditch them.  Then pd will behave the same 
> 
> on all platforms.   If people really want to continue using batch  
> files, they can write a bunch of pdrc.txt files, then in the batch file 
> 
> put: pd --rcfile my-pdrc.txt  This will make handling batch files  
> easier too.
> 

and of course they wouldn't even have to do it.
they will still be able to use all the command-line arguments and create bat/sh
files like
"pd -lib /usr/local/lib/pd/extra -helppath /usr/local/lib/pd/doc/5.reference/
-inchannels 2 -outchannels 2"
(or are we discussing about *removing* command-line arguments in favour of
preference-files ? i am strongly agains this)


mfg.a.dr
IOhannes