Re: Totally Gormless

[Nicola Pero]

> > But I can't see much use for the SYS / PLATFORM / PLATFORM_LOCAL 
> > variables
> > then ... presumably you can access those eg SYS_APPS settings via the
> > standard OpenStep API to get paths ? ... they won't work on other 
> > OpenStep
> > systems though and the paths you get from the API calls aren't much 
> > use
> > unless you have code that deals differently with all the types of 
> > system
> > you can work on ... eg, once I'm told that SYS_APPS is //C/Windows (is
> > that the location of system binaries in Windows ?), I need to have 
> > heavily
> > platform-dependent code to know what to do with that path, eg which
> > executables I can find in that path!  At which point the benefit of 
> > having
> > the API giving you SYS_APPS is lost, isn't it ?
> > 
> > Maybe someone has got a good example of how those are used ?
> > 
> > Personally I'd vote for removing SYS_APPS etc. entirely from the API.
> > 
> 
> The Windows paths are still a work in progress. I'm not sure when 
> those will be done.  Here's some previous discussion on the topic:
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnustep/2004-01/msg00038.html
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2004-01/msg00642.html

Thanks - interesting discussion - seems to suggest we don't really need or
want SYS_APPS etc ;-)

Btw, talking of Windows, I think using GNUstep.conf on Windows too would 
be better than the Windows registry. :-)

Can't see much good coming from the Windows registry, particularly if the
paths we are storing are essential for the application to run and are not
really user preferences.

Who likes the Windows registry anyway ?  A local file on disk is something 
most users can delete or edit, while I don't remind ever meeting a real 
user that can remove old/unused Windows registry entries, or edit them.

... and having special code to deal with it seems a waste of time and
effort if GNUstep.conf could work exactly as well (and with the same
mechanisms) on Windows.

Thanks