On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo wrote: > IMHO, this would be a Bad Thing(tm). It is far beyond the scope of LSB to > specify *how* an application stores its configuration.
Read mission statement:"The goal of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) is to develop and promote a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant Linux system". Just how specifying the way applications store configuration is *not* increasing compatibility is beyond me. Your opinion is equivalent to saying "let's not fulfill the goal of lsb". Obviously making some unreasonable move here can be disastrous, so it needs to be done the way hedgehogs make love: very, very carefully. :-) >It may be > acceptable to specify *where* an application stores its configuration, > though. I.e. daemons with one config file store it in /etc, daemons with > multiple config files store in a subdirectory of /etc, normal applications > store it in a .rc file in the user's home directory, or a .subdirectory > for multiple file stuff. That's bare minimum, I think there is a need to go beyond that, with obvious assumption of doing it in such way that would not alienate current users and developers, as well as people without GUI. > However, even that may be beyond LSB, and I > really think that dealing with config files should be left to the > application vendor. That's like saying: leave defining HTML to Netscape and MS. They will do what they want, but common base is necessary anyway. Following your thinking W3C should be eliminated. Regardless how good job any Web company will do, consortium is necessary anyway for settling some common ground, and building extensions (commercial, free software, whatever really) on top of that. But in order to do that, you have to have *some* common ground on important issues, and application configuration especially in GUI area is important ground. Marcin Krol ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hiroshima 45 Tschernobyl 86 Windows 95
