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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Monday, Apr 5, 2004, at 02:36 America/New_York, zmoelnig at iem.at  
wrote:

> 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.


Ok, so let's look at some examples of system vs. user conf files and  
where they are merged or not.  bash, tcsh, etc. do merging, but they  
are hardly aimed at the general computer using population.  But it does  
work well in my experience.

As for Windows registry key, its my guess that they generally override  
rather than merge.  Or for the most part they are completely separated  
into System-wide things (CLASSES_ROOT) or per-user things  
(CURRENT_USER).  Upon a quick glance I couldn't find any overlap  
between LOCAL_MACHINE and CURRENT_USER.  Do you know of any specific  
examples?

In MacOS X, apps almost always only have per-user conf files  
(~/Library/Preferences).  There are some stored in  
/Library/Preferences, but as far as I can tell, they are not in  
~/Library/Preferences.  (com.apple.soundpref.plist, for example).

So if we are going to attempt the merging behavior, then I think we  
need to find a good example of where it is working well.

>
>
>> 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)

I think we are all in agreement here for sure.

.hc

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

                     There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
										-A.J. Muste
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